Contents:

Page No 1

Page No 2

Page No 3

Page No 4

When God Laughs and Other Stories ...............................................................................................................1

Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows, looked upward at the beamed roof,

and listened for a moment to the savage roar of the southeaster as it caught the bungalow in its bellowing

jaws. Then he held his glass between him and the fire and laughed for joy through the golden wine.

"It is beautiful," he said. "It is sweetly sweet. It is a woman's wine, and it was made for grayrobed saints to

"We grow it on our own warm hills," I said, with pardonable California pride. "You rode up yesterday

It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really himself until he felt the mellow

warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, the

high pitch and lilt went out of his thoughtprocesses and he was prone to be as deadly dull as a British

Sundaynot dull as other men are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez

From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear friend and dearer comrade, was a sot. Far

from it. He rarely erred. As I have said, he was an artist. He knew when he had enough, and enough, with

His was a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek. Yet he was far from Greek. "I am

Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange and

ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry and primitiveness of his features. His eyes,

under massively arched brows, were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while before

them was perpetually falling down a great black mop of hair through which he gazed like a roguish satyr

from a thicket. He invariably wore a soft flannel shirt under his velvetcorduroy jacket, and his necktie was

red. This latter stood for the red flag (he had once lived with the socialists of Paris), and it symbolized the

blood and brotherhood of man. Also, he had never been known to wear anything on his head save a

leatherbanded sombrero. It was even rumoured that he had been born with this particular piece of headgear.

And in my experience it was provocative of nothing short of sheer delight to see that Mexican sombrero

hailing a cab in Piccadilly or stormtossed in the crush for the New York Elevated.

As I have said, Carquinez was made quick by wine"as the clay was made quick when God breathed the

breath of life into it," was his way of saying it. I confess that he was blasphemously intimate with God; and I

must add that there was no blasphemy in him. He was at all times honest, and, because he was compounded

of paradoxes, greatly misunderstood by those who did not know him. He could be as elementally raw at times

as a screaming savage; and at other times as delicate as a maid, as subtle as a Spaniard. Andwell, was he

And now I must ask pardon for the space I have given him. (He is my friend, and I love him.) The house was

shaking to the storm, as he drew closer to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me, and by

the added lustre of his eye, and by the alertness of it, I knew that at last he was pitched in his proper key.

"Again the gods," he laughed. "It is their game we play. They deal and shuffle all the cards . . . and take the

stakes. Think not that you have escaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vineclad hills, your

"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have surrendered. You have made terms with

the enemy. You have made confession that you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue. You have

nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in you. You have run away from life. You have played

a trick, shabby trick. You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your cards under the

He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely interrupted to roll a long, brown,

"But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have tried it . . . and lost. The gods know

how to deal with such as you. To pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your

wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease. Very well. You will become sated

with surcease. You say you have escaped satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is

Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags and tatters of it.

"Do I not know?" he asked. "The gods always win. I have watched men play for years what seemed a

"Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin Fiske. You remember him? And his

Dantesque face and poet's soul, singing his chant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel

"That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love; and yethow shall I say?drenched

through with holiness as your own air here is with the perfume of flowers. Well, they married. They played a

"The world conjectures. The world sees only the face of things. But I know. Has it ever entered your mind to

wonder why she took the veil, buried herself in that dolorous convent of the living dead?"

"A pat answer," he said, "machinemade like a piece of cottondrill. The world's judgment! And much the

world knows about it. Like you, she fled from life. She was beaten. She flung out the white flag of fatigue.

"Now I shall tell you the whole tale, and you must believe me, for I know. They had pondered the problem of

satiety. They loved Love. They knew to the uttermost farthing the value of Love. They loved him so well that

they were fain to keep him always, warm and athrill in their hearts. They welcomed his coming; they feared

"Love was desire, they held, a delicious pain. He was ever seeking easement, and when he found that for

which he sought, he died. Love denied was Love alive; Love granted was Love deceased. Do you follow me?

They saw it was not the way of life to be hungry for what it has. To eat and still be hungryman has never

accomplished that feat. The problem of satiety. That is it. To have and to keep the sharp famineedge of

appetite at the groaning board. This was their problem, for they loved Love. Often did they discuss it, with all

Love's sweet ardours brimming in their eyes; his ruddy blood spraying their cheeks; his voice playing in and

out with their voices, now hiding as a tremolo in their throats, and again shading a tone with that ineffable

"How do I know all this? I sawmuch. More I learned from her diary. This I found in it, from Fiona

Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering voice, that twilightwhisper, that breath so dewysweet, that

flamewinged lute player whom none sees but for a moment, in a rainbowshimmer of joy, or a sudden

lightningflare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not

with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe viol of public music, but as one wrought by ecstasy,

"How to keep the flamewinged luteplayer with his dumb eloquence of desire? To feast him was to lose

him. Their love for each other was a great love. Their granaries were overflowing with plenitude; yet they

"Nor were they lean little fledglings theorizing on the threshold of Love. They were robust and realized souls.

They had loved before, with others, in the days before they met; and in those days they had throttled Love

with caresses, and killed him with kisses, and buried him in the pit of satiety.

"They were not cold wraiths, this man and woman. They were warm human. They had no Saxon soberness in

their blood. The colour of it was sunset red. They glowed with it. Temperamentally theirs was the French

joy in the flesh. They were idealists, but their idealism was Gallic. It was not tempered by the chill and

sombre fluid that for the English serves as blood. There was no stoicism about them. They were Americans,

descended out of the English, and yet the refraining and selfdenying of the English spiritgroping were not

"They were all this that I have said, and they were made for joy, only they achieved a concept. A curse on

concepts! They played with logic, and this was their logic.But first let me tell you of a talk we had one

night. It was of Gautier's Madeline de Maupin. You remember the maid? She kissed once, and once only, and

kisses she would have no more. Not that she found kisses were not sweet, but that she feared with repetition

they would cloy. Satiety again! She tried to play without stakes against the gods. Now this is contrary to a

rule of the game the gods themselves have made. Only the rules are not posted over the table. Mortals must

"Well, to the logic. The man and the woman argued thus: Why kiss once only? If to kiss once were wise, was

it not wiser to kiss not at all? Thus could they keep Love alive. Fasting, he would knock forever at their

"Perhaps it was out of their heredity that they achieved this unholy concept. The breed will out and

sometimes most fantastically. Thus in them did cursed Albion array herself a scheming wanton, a bold, cold

calculating, and artful hussy. After all, I do not know. But this I know: it was out of their inordinate desire for

"As he said (I read it long afterward in one of his letters to her): 'To hold you in my arms, close, and yet not

close. To yearn for you, and never to have you, and so always to have you.' And she: 'For you to be always

just beyond my reach. To be ever attaining you, and yet never attaining you, and for this to last forever,

"That is not the way they said it. On my lips their lovephilosophy is mangled. And who am I to delve into

their soulstuff? I am a frog, on the dank edge of a great darkness, gazing goggleeyed at the mystery and

"And they were right, as far as they went. Everything is good . . . as long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and

"They got that from a sonnet of Alfred Austin's. It was called 'Love's Wisdom.' It was the one kiss of

"But they were wiser. They would not kiss and part. They would not kiss at all, and thus they planned to stay

at Love's topmost peak. They married. You were in England at the time. And never was there such a

marriage. They kept their secret to themselves. I did not know, then. Their rapture's warmth did not cool.

Their love burned with increasing brightness. Never was there anything like it. The time passed, the months,

"Everybody marvelled. They became the wonderful lovers, and they were greatly envied. Sometimes women

pitied her because she was childless; it is the form the envy of such creatures takes.

"And I did not know their secret. I pondered and I marvelled. As first I had expected, subconsciously I

imagine, the passing of their love. Then I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained.

Then I became curious. What was their secret? What were the magic fetters with which they bound Love to

them? How did they hold the graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had

"As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were lovemad. They lived in an unending revel of Love.

They made a pomp and ceremonial of it. They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of Love. No, they

were not neurotics. They were sane and healthy, and they were artists. But they had accomplished the

"And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love. I puzzled and wondered, and then one

Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, "Have you ever read, 'Love's Waiting Time'?"

"Page wrote itCurtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that bit of verse that gave me the clue. One day, in

the windowseat near the big pianoyou remember how she could play? She used to laugh, sometimes, and

doubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music. She called me a 'musicsot' once, a

'sounddebauchee.' What a voice he had! When he sang I believed in immortality, my regard for the gods

grew almost patronizing and I devised ways and means whereby I surely could outwit them and their tricks.

"It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and singing lovesongs with a freshness

virginal as newborn Love himself, with a ripeness and wealth of ardour that young lovers can never know.

Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that longmarried pair. To see them, all fire and flame and

tenderness, at a trembling distance, lavishing caresses of eye and voice with every action, through every

silencetheir love driving them toward each other, and they withholding like fluttering moths, each to the

other a candleflame, and revolving each about the other in the mad gyrations of an amazing orbitflight! It

seemed, in obedience to some great law of physics, more potent than gravitation and more subtle, that they

must corporeally melt each into each there before my very eyes. Small wonder they were called the

"I have wandered. Now to the clue. One day in the windowseat I found a book of verse. It opened of itself,

betraying long habit, to 'Love's Waiting Time.' The page was thumbed and limp with overhandling, and there

"I folded the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for a long time. I was stunned by the

clearness of vision the verse had imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's lightning in

the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the forerunner of young lifeyoung life that is imperative

"I conned the lines over in my mind'Not yet, sometime''O Love, not yet''Feed it with lipless kisses,

let it sleep.' And I laughed aloud, ha, ha! I saw with white vision their blameless souls. They were children.

They did not understand. They played with Nature's fire and bedded with a naked sword. They laughed at the

gods. They would stop the cosmic sap. They had invented a system, and brought it to the gamingtable of

life, and expected to win out. 'Beware!' I cried. 'The gods are behind the table. They make new rules for every

"But I did not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their system was worthless and throw it away.

They would be content with whatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away.

"I watched. I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and still the famineedge of their love

grew the sharper. Never did they dull it with a permitted loveclasp. They ground and whetted it on

selfdenial, and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I doubted. Did the gods sleep? I

wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed to myself. The man and the woman had made a miracle. They had

outwitted God. They had shamed the flesh, and blackened the face of the good Earth Mother. They had

played with her fire and not been burned. They were immune. They were themselves gods, knowing good

from evil and tasting not. 'Was this the way gods came to be?' I asked myself. 'I am a frog,' I said. 'But for my

mud lidded eyes I should have been blinded by the brightness of this wonder I have witnessed. I have puffed

"Yet even in this, my latest wisdom, I was wrong. They were not gods. They were man and womansoft

clay that sighed and thrilled, shot through with desire, thumbed with strange weaknesses which the gods have

Carquinez broke from his narrative to roll another cigarette and to laugh harshly. It was not a pretty laugh; it

was like the mockery of a devil, and it rose over and rode the roar of the storm that came muffled to our ears

"I am a frog," he said apologetically. "How were they to understand? They were artists, not biologists. They

knew the clay of the studio, but they did not know the clay of which they themselves were made. But this I

will saythey played high. Never was there such a game before, and I doubt me if there will ever be such a

"Never was lovers' ecstasy like theirs. They had not killed Love with kisses. They had quickened him with

denial. And by denial they drove him on till he was all aburst with desire. And the flamewinged luteplayer

fanned them with his warm wings till they were all but swooning. It was the very delirium of Love, and it

"They longed and yearned, with all the fond pangs and sweet delicious agonies, with an intensity never felt

"And then one day the drowsy gods ceased nodding. They aroused and looked at the man and woman who

had made a mock of them. And the man and woman looked into each other's eyes one morning and knew that

something was gone. It was the flamewinged one. He had fled, silently, in the night, from their anchorites'

"They looked into each other's eyes and knew that they did not care. Desire was dead. Do you understand?

Desire was dead. And they had never kissed. Not once had they kissed. Love was gone. They would never

yearn and burn again. For them there was nothing leftno more tremblings and flutterings and delicious

anguishes, no more throbbing and pulsing, and sighing and song. Desire was dead. It had died in the night, on

a couch cold and unattended; nor had they witnessed its passing. They learned it for the first time in each

"The gods may not be kind, but they are often merciful. They had twirled the little ivory ball and swept the

stakes from the table. All that remained was the man and woman gazing into each other's cold eyes. And then

he died. That was the mercy. Within the week Marvin Fiske was dead you remember the accident. And in

And Carquinez, in the firelight a veritable Mephistopheles in velvet jacket, fixed me with his black eyes.

"And they won, you said? The world's judgment! I have told you, and I know. They won as you are winning,

"But you," I demanded hotly; "you with your orgies of sound and sense, with your mad cities and madder

He shook his head slowly. "Because you with your sober bucolic regime, lose, is no reason that I should win.

We never win. Sometimes we think we win. That is a little pleasantry of the gods."

The threat had no effect on the boy. He clung stubbornly to sleep, fighting for its oblivion as the dreamer

fights for his dream. The boy's hands loosely clenched themselves, and he made feeble, spasmodic blows at

the air. These blows were intended for his mother, but she betrayed practised familiarity in avoiding them as

It was a cry that began, muffled, in the deeps of sleep, that swiftly rushed upward, like a wail, into passionate

belligerence, and that died away and sank down into an inarticulate whine. It was a bestial cry, as of a soul in

But she did not mind. She was a sadeyed, tiredfaced woman, and she had grown used to this task, which

she repeated every day of her life. She got a grip on the bedclothes and tried to strip them down; but the boy,

ceasing his punching, clung to them desperately. In a huddle, at the foot of the bed, he still remained covered.

Then she tried dragging the bedding to the floor. The boy opposed her. She braced herself. Hers was the

superior weight, and the boy and bedding gave, the former instinctively following the latter in order to shelter

As he toppled on the edge of the bed it seemed that he must fall headfirst to the floor. But consciousness

fluttered up in him. He righted himself and for a moment perilously balanced. Then he struck the floor on his

feet. On the instant his mother seized him by the shoulders and shook him. Again his fists struck out, this

time with more force and directness. At the same time his eyes opened. She released him. He was awake.

He did not mind the darkness. When he had got into his clothes, he went out into the kitchen. His tread was

very heavy for so thin and light a boy. His legs dragged with their own weight, which seemed unreasonable

because they were such skinny legs. He drew a brokenbottomed chair to the table.

He arose as sharply from the chair, and, without a word, went to the sink. It was a greasy, filthy sink. A smell

came up from the outlet. He took no notice of it. That a sink should smell was to him part of the natural order,

just as it was a part of the natural order that the soap should be grimy with dishwater and hard to lather. Nor

did he try very hard to make it lather. Several splashes of the cold water from the running faucet completed

the function. He did not wash his teeth. For that matter he had never seen a toothbrush, nor did he know that

there existed beings in the world who were guilty of so great a foolishness as tooth washing.

"You might wash yourself wunst a day without bein' told," his mother complained.

She was holding a broken lid on the pot as she poured two cups of coffee. He made no remark, for this was a

standing quarrel between them, and the one thing upon which his mother was hard as adamant. "Wunst" a

day it was compulsory that he should wash his face. He dried himself on a greasy towel, damp and dirty and

"I wish we didn't live so far away," she said, as he sat down. "I try to do the best I can. You know that. But a

He scarcely followed her. He had heard it all before, many times. The range of her thought was limited, and

she was ever harking back to the hardship worked upon them by living so far from the mills.

"A dollar means more grub," he remarked sententiously. "I'd sooner do the walkin' an' git the grub."

He ate hurriedly, half chewing the bread and washing the unmasticated chunks down with coffee. The hot and

muddy liquid went by the name of coffee. Johnny thought it was coffeeand excellent coffee. That was one

of the few of life's illusions that remained to him. He had never drunk real coffee in his life.

In addition to the bread, there was a small piece of cold pork. His mother refilled his cup with coffee. As he

was finishing the bread, he began to watch if more was forthcoming. She intercepted his questioning glance.

"Now, don't be hoggish, Johnny," was her comment. "You've had your share. Your brothers an' sisters are

He did not answer the rebuke. He was not much of a talker. Also, he ceased his hungry glancing for more. He

was uncomplaining, with a patience that was as terrible as the school in which it had been learned. He

finished his coffee, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and started to rise.

"Wait a second," she said hastily. "I guess the loaf kin stand you another slicea thin un."

There was legerdemain in her actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put

loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had

deceived him, but he had noted her sleightofhand. Nevertheless, he took the bread shamelessly. He had a

philosophy that his mother, because of her chronic sickliness, was not much of an eater anyway.

She saw that he was chewing the bread dry, and reached over and emptied her coffee cup into his.

A distant whistle, prolonged and shrieking, brought both of them to their feet. She glanced at the tin

alarmclock on the shelf. The hands stood at halfpast five. The rest of the factory world was just arousing

from sleep. She drew a shawl about her shoulders, and on her head put a dingy hat, shapeless and ancient.

"We've got to run," she said, turning the wick of the lamp and blowing down the chimney.

They groped their way out and down the stairs. It was clear and cold, and Johnny shivered at the first contact

with the outside air. The stars had not yet begun to pale in the sky, and the city lay in blackness. Both Johnny

and his mother shuffled their feet as they walked. There was no ambition in the leg muscles to swing the feet

"Don't be late," was her final warning from out of the dark that was swallowing her up.

He made no response, steadily keeping on his way. In the factory quarter, doors were opening everywhere,

and he was soon one of a multitude that pressed onward through the dark. As he entered the factory gate the

whistle blew again. He glanced at the east. Across a ragged skyline of housetops a pale light was beginning

to creep. This much he saw of the day as he turned his back upon it and joined his work gang.

He took his place in one of many long rows of machines. Before him, above a bin filled with small bobbins,

were large bobbins revolving rapidly. Upon these he wound the jutetwine of the small bobbins. The work

was simple. All that was required was celerity. The small bobbins were emptied so rapidly, and there were so

He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left hand for a brake, stopping the large

bobbin and at the same time, with thumb and forefinger, catching the flying end of twine. Also, at the same

time, with his right hand, he caught up the loose twineend of a small bobbin. These various acts with both

hands were performed simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a flash of his hands as he looped

the weaver's knot and released the bobbin. There was nothing difficult about weaver's knots. He once boasted

he could tie them in his sleep. And for that matter, he sometimes did, toiling centuries long in a single night at

Some of the boys shirked, wasting time and machinery by not replacing the small bobbins when they ran out.

And there was an overseer to prevent this. He caught Johnny's neighbour at the trick, and boxed his ears.

Johnny's bobbins were running full blast, but he did not thrill at the indirect praise. There had been a time . . .

but that was long ago, very long ago. His apathetic face was expressionless as he listened to himself being

held up as a shining example. He was the perfect worker. He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a

commonplace, and besides it didn't seem to mean anything to him any more. From the perfect worker he had

evolved into the perfect machine. When his work went wrong, it was with him as with the machine, due to

faulty material. It would have been as possible for a perfect naildie to cut imperfect nails as for him to make

And small wonder. There had never been a time when he had not been in intimate relationship with

machines. Machinery had almost been bred into him, and at any rate he had been brought up on it. Twelve

years before, there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this very mill. Johnny's mother

had fainted. They stretched her out on the floor in the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly

women were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes there was one more soul in

the loom room than had entered by the doors. It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the

looms in his ears, drawing with his first breath the warm, moist air that was thick with flying lint. He had

coughed that first day in order to rid his lungs of the lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since.

The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The boy's face was convulsed with hatred for the

overseer who kept a threatening eye on him from a distance; but every bobbin was running full. The boy

yelled terrible oaths into the whirling bobbins before him; but the sound did not carry half a dozen feet, the

Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting things. Besides, things grow monotonous by

repetition, and this particular happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to him as useless to oppose

the overseer as to defy the will of a machine. Machines were made to go in certain ways and to perform

But at eleven o'clock there was excitement in the room. In an apparently occult way the excitement instantly

permeated everywhere. The onelegged boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across

the floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of

the mill was coming along, accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched shirta

He looked sharply at the boys as he passed along. Sometimes he stopped and asked questions. When he did

so, he was compelled to shout at the top of his lungs, at which moments his face was ludicrously contorted

with the strain of making himself heard. His quick eye noted the empty machine alongside of Johnny's, but he

said nothing. Johnny also caught his eye, and he stopped abruptly. He caught Johnny by the arm to draw him

back a step from the machine; but with an exclamation of surprise he released the arm.

"Pipe stems," was the answer. "Look at those legs. The boy's got the ricketsincipient, but he's got them. If

epilepsy doesn't get him in the end, it will be because tuberculosis gets him first."

Johnny listened, but did not understand. Furthermore he was not interested in future ills. There was an

immediate and more serious ill that threatened him in the form of the inspector.

"Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth," the inspector said, or shouted, bending close to the boy's ear

"Fourteen," Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs. So loudly did he lie that it started him off

in a dry, hacking cough that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.

"Off and onbut that was before the new law was passed," the superintendent hastened to add.

"Machine idle?" the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine beside Johnny's, in which the

"Looks that way." The superintendent motioned the overseer to him and shouted in his ear and pointed at the

They passed on, and Johnny returned to his work, relieved in that the ill had been averted. But the

onelegged boy was not so fortunate. The sharp eyed inspector haled him out at arms length from the bin

truck. His lips were quivering, and his face had all the expression of one upon whom was fallen profound and

irremediable disaster. The overseer looked astounded, as though for the first time he had laid eyes on the boy,

"I know him," the inspector said. "He's twelve years old. I've had him discharged from three factories inside

He turned to the onelegged boy. "You promised me, word and honour, that you'd go to school."

The onelegged boy burst into tears. "Please, Mr. Inspector, two babies died on us, and we're awful poor."

"What makes you cough that way?" the inspector demanded, as though charging him with crime.

And as in denial of guilt, the onelegged boy replied: "It ain't nothin'. I jes' caught a cold last week, Mr.

In the end the onelegged boy went out of the room with the inspector, the latter accompanied by the anxious

and protesting superintendent. After that monotony settled down again. The long morning and the longer

afternoon wore away and the whistle blew for quitting time. Darkness had already fallen when Johnny passed

out through the factory gate. In the interval the sun had made a golden ladder of the sky, flooded the world

with its gracious warmth, and dropped down and disappeared in the west behind a ragged skyline of

Supper was the family meal of the daythe one meal at which Johnny encountered his younger brothers and

sisters. It partook of the nature of an encounter, to him, for he was very old, while they were distressingly

young. He had no patience with their excessive and amazing juvenility. He did not understand it. His own

childhood was too far behind him. He was like an old and irritable man, annoyed by the turbulence of their

young spirits that was to him arrant silliness. He glowered silently over his food, finding compensation in the

thought that they would soon have to go to work. That would take the edge off of them and make them sedate

and dignifiedlike him. Thus it was, after the fashion of the human, that Johnny made of himself a yardstick

During the meal, his mother explained in various ways and with infinite repetition that she was trying to do

the best she could; so that it was with relief, the scant meal ended, that Johnny shoved back his chair and

arose. He debated for a moment between bed and the front door, and finally went out the latter. He did not go

far. He sat down on the stoop, his knees drawn up and his narrow shoulders drooping forward, his elbows on

As he sat there, he did no thinking. He was just resting. So far as his mind was concerned, it was asleep. His

brothers and sisters came out, and with other children played noisily about him. An electric globe at the

corner lighted their frolics. He was peevish and irritable, that they knew; but the spirit of adventure lured

them into teasing him. They joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in his face

weird and uncomplimentary doggerel. At first he snarled curses at them curses he had learned from the lips

of various foremen. Finding this futile, and remembering his dignity, he relapsed into dogged silence.

His brother Will, next to him in age, having just passed his tenth birthday, was the ringleader. Johnny did not

possess particularly kindly feelings toward him. His life had early been embittered by continual giving over

and giving way to Will. He had a definite feeling that Will was greatly in his debt and was ungrateful about it.

In his own playtime, far back in the dim past, he had been robbed of a large part of that playtime by being

compelled to take care of Will. Will was a baby then, and then, as now, their mother had spent her days in the

mills. To Johnny had fallen the part of little father and little mother as well.

Will seemed to show the benefit of the giving over and the giving way. He was wellbuilt, fairly rugged, as

tall as his elder brother and even heavier. It was as though the lifeblood of the one had been diverted into the

other's veins. And in spirits it was the same. Johnny was jaded, worn out, without resilience, while his

The mocking chant rose louder and louder. Will leaned closer as he danced, thrusting out his tongue. Johnny's

left arm shot out and caught the other around the neck. At the same time he rapped his bony fist to the other's

nose. It was a pathetically bony fist, but that it was sharp to hurt was evidenced by the squeal of pain it

produced. The other children were uttering frightened cries, while Johnny's sister, Jennie, had dashed into the

He thrust Will from him, kicked him savagely on the shins, then reached for him and slammed him face

downward in the dirt. Nor did he release him till the face had been rubbed into the dirt several times. Then the

"Why can't he leave me alone?" was Johnny's reply to her upbraiding. "Can't he see I'm tired?"

"I'm as big as you," Will raged in her arms, his face a mass of tears, dirt, and blood. "I'm as big as you now,

"You ought to be to work, seein' how big you are," Johnny snarled. "That's what's the matter with you. You

Johnny's mouth was open, further to express the sense of unfairness that he felt, but the mouth closed with a

snap. He turned gloomily on his heel and stalked into the house and to bed. The door of his room was open to

let in warmth from the kitchen. As he undressed in the semidarkness he could hear his mother talking with a

neighbour woman who had dropped in. His mother was crying, and her speech was punctuated with spiritless

"I can't make out what's gittin' into Johnny," he could hear her say. "He didn't used to be this way. He was a

"An' he is a good boy," she hastened to defend. "He's worked faithful, an' he did go to work too young. But it

Prolonged sniffling from the kitchen, and Johnny murmured to himself as his eyelids closed down, "You

The next morning he was torn bodily by his mother from the grip of sleep. Then came the meagre breakfast,

the tramp through the dark, and the pale glimpse of day across the housetops as he turned his back on it and

went in through the factory gate. It was another day, of all the days, and all the days were alike.

And yet there had been variety in his lifeat the times he changed from one job to another, or was taken

sick. When he was six, he was little mother and father to Will and the other children still younger. At seven

he went into the millswinding bobbins. When he was eight, he got work in another mill. His new job was

marvellously easy. All he had to do was to sit down with a little stick in his hand and guide a stream of cloth

that flowed past him. This stream of cloth came out of the maw of a machine, passed over a hot roller, and

went on its way elsewhere. But he sat always in one place, beyond the reach of daylight, a gasjet flaring

He was very happy at that job, in spite of the moist heat, for he was still young and in possession of dreams

and illusions. And wonderful dreams he dreamed as he watched the steaming cloth streaming endlessly by.

But there was no exercise about the work, no call upon his mind, and he dreamed less and less, while his

mind grew torpid and drowsy. Nevertheless, he earned two dollars a week, and two dollars represented the

But when he was nine, he lost his job. Measles was the cause of it. After he recovered, he got work in a glass

factory. The pay was better, and the work demanded skill. It was piecework, and the more skilful he was, the

bigger wages he earned. Here was incentive. And under this incentive he developed into a remarkable

It was simple work, the tying of glass stoppers into small bottles. At his waist he carried a bundle of twine.

He held the bottles between his knees so that he might work with both hands. Thus, in a sitting position and

bending over his own knees, his narrow shoulders grew humped and his chest was contracted for ten hours

each day. This was not good for the lungs, but he tied three hundred dozen bottles a day.

The superintendent was very proud of him, and brought visitors to look at him. In ten hours three hundred

dozen bottles passed through his hands. This meant that he had attained machinelike perfection. All waste

movements were eliminated. Every motion of his thin arms, every movement of a muscle in the thin fingers,

was swift and accurate. He worked at high tension, and the result was that he grew nervous. At night his

muscles twitched in his sleep, and in the daytime he could not relax and rest. He remained keyed up and his

muscles continued to twitch. Also he grew sallow and his lintcough grew worse. Then pneumonia laid hold

of the feeble lungs within the contracted chest, and he lost his job in the glassworks.

Now he had returned to the jute mills where he had first begun with winding bobbins. But promotion was

waiting for him. He was a good worker. He would next go on the starcher, and later he would go into the

The machinery ran faster than when he had first gone to work, and his mind ran slower. He no longer

dreamed at all, though his earlier years had been full of dreaming. Once he had been in love. It was when he

first began guiding the cloth over the hot roller, and it was with the daughter of the superintendent. She was

much older than he, a young woman, and he had seen her at a distance only a paltry halfdozen times. But

that made no difference. On the surface of the cloth stream that poured past him, he pictured radiant futures

wherein he performed prodigies of toil, invented miraculous machines, won to the mastership of the mills,

But that was all in the long ago, before he had grown too old and tired to love. Also, she had married and

gone away, and his mind had gone to sleep. Yet it had been a wonderful experience, and he used often to look

back upon it as other men and women look back upon the time they believed in fairies. He had never believed

in fairies nor Santa Claus; but he had believed implicitly in the smiling future his imagination had wrought

He had become a man very early in life. At seven, when he drew his first wages, began his adolescence. A

certain feeling of independence crept up in him, and the relationship between him and his mother changed.

Somehow, as an earner and breadwinner, doing his own work in the world, he was more like an equal with

her. Manhood, fullblown manhood, had come when he was eleven, at which time he had gone to work on

the night shift for six months. No child works on the night shift and remains a child.

There had been several great events in his life. One of these had been when his mother bought some

California prunes. Two others had been the two times when she cooked custard. Those had been events. He

remembered them kindly. And at that time his mother had told him of a blissful dish she would sometime

make"floating island," she had called it, "better than custard." For years he had looked forward to the day

when he would sit down to the table with floating island before him, until at last he had relegated the idea of

Once he found a silver quarter lying on the sidewalk. That, also, was a great event in his life, withal a tragic

one. He knew his duty on the instant the silver flashed on his eyes, before even he had picked it up. At home,

as usual, there was not enough to eat, and home he should have taken it as he did his wages every Saturday

night. Right conduct in this case was obvious; but he never had any spending of his money, and he was

suffering from candy hunger. He was ravenous for the sweets that only on redletter days he had ever tasted

He did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew it was sin, and deliberately he sinned when he went on a

fifteencent candy debauch. Ten cents he saved for a future orgy; but not being accustomed to the carrying of

money, he lost the ten cents. This occurred at the time when he was suffering all the torments of conscience,

and it was to him an act of divine retribution. He had a frightened sense of the closeness of an awful and

wrathful God. God had seen, and God had been swift to punish, denying him even the full wages of sin.

In memory he always looked back upon that as the one great criminal deed of his life, and at the recollection

his conscience always awoke and gave him another twinge. It was the one skeleton in his closet. Also, being

so made, and circumstanced, he looked back upon the deed with regret. He was dissatisfied with the manner

in which he had spent the quarter. He could have invested it better, and, out of his later knowledge of the

quickness of God, he would have beaten God out by spending the whole quarter at one fell swoop. In

retrospect he spent the quarter a thousand times, and each time to better advantage.

There was one other memory of the past, dim and faded, but stamped into his soul everlasting by the savage

feet of his father. It was more like a nightmare than a remembered vision of a concrete thingmore like the

race memory of man that makes him fall in his sleep and that goes back to his arboreal ancestry.

This particular memory never came to Johnny in broad daylight when he was wide awake. It came at night, in

bed, at the moment that his consciousness was sinking down and losing itself in sleep. It always aroused him

to frightened wakefulness, and for the moment, in the first sickening start, it seemed to him that he lay

crosswise on the foot of the bed. In the bed were the vague forms of his father and mother. He never saw

what his father looked like. He had but one impression of his father, and that was that he had savage and

His earlier memories lingered with him, but he had no late memories. All days were alike. Yesterday or last

year were the same as a thousand years or a minute. Nothing ever happened. There were no events to mark

the march of time. Time did not march. It stood always still. It was only the whirling machines that moved,

When he was fourteen, he went to work on the starcher. It was a colossal event. Something had at last

happened that could be remembered beyond a night's sleep or a week's payday. It marked an era. It was a

machine Olympiad, a thing to date from. "When I went to work on the starcher," or, "after," or "before I went

He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom room and taking a loom. Here was an incentive

again, for it was piecework. And he excelled, because the clay of him had been moulded by the mills into

the perfect machine. At the end of three months he was running two looms, and, later, three and four.

At the end of his second year at the looms he was turning out more yards than any other weaver, and more

than twice as much as some of the less skilful ones. And at home things began to prosper as he approached

the full stature of his earning power. Not, however, that his increased earnings were in excess of need. The

children were growing up. They ate more. And they were going to school, and schoolbooks cost money.

And somehow, the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things. Even the rent went up, though the

He had grown taller; but with his increased height he seemed leaner than ever. Also, he was more nervous.

With the nervousness increased his peevishness and irritability. The children had learned by many bitter

lessons to fight shy of him. His mother respected him for his earning power, but somehow her respect was

There was no joyousness in life for him. The procession of the days he never saw. The nights he slept away in

twitching unconsciousness. The rest of the time he worked, and his consciousness was machine

consciousness. Outside this his mind was a blank. He had no ideals, and but one illusion; namely, that he

drank excellent coffee. He was a work beast. He had no mental life whatever; yet deep down in the crypts of

his mind, unknown to him, were being weighed and sifted every hour of his toil, every movement of his

hands, every twitch of his muscles, and preparations were making for a future course of action that would

It was in the late spring that he came home from work one night aware of unusual tiredness. There was a keen

expectancy in the air as he sat down to the table, but he did not notice. He went through the meal in moody

silence, mechanically eating what was before him. The children um'd and ah'd and made smacking noises

"Oh," he said. And after two or three mouthfuls, he added, "I guess I ain't hungry tonight."

His feet dragged more heavily than usual as he crossed the kitchen floor. Undressing was a Titan's task, a

monstrous futility, and he wept weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a rising,

swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his

wrist, while in the ends of them was a remoteness of sensation vague and fuzzy like his brain. The small of

his back ached intolerably. All his bones ached. He ached everywhere. And in his head began the shrieking,

pounding, crashing, roaring of a million looms. All space was filled with flying shuttles. They darted in and

out, intricately, amongst the stars. He worked a thousand looms himself, and ever they speeded up, faster and

faster, and his brain unwound, faster and faster, and became the thread that fed the thousand flying shuttles.

He did not go to work next morning. He was too busy weaving colossally on the thousand looms that ran

inside his head. His mother went to work, but first she sent for the doctor. It was a severe attack of la grippe,

It was a very severe attack, and it was a week before Johnny dressed and tottered feebly across the floor.

Another week, the doctor said, and he would be fit to return to work. The foreman of the loom room visited

him on Sunday afternoon, the first day of his convalescence. The best weaver in the room, the foreman told

his mother. His job would be held for him. He could come back to work a week from Monday.

"He's ben that sick he ain't himself yet," she explained apologetically to the visitor.

Johnny sat hunched up and gazing steadfastly at the floor. He sat in the same position long after the foreman

had gone. It was warm outdoors, and he sat on the stoop in the afternoon. Sometimes his lips moved. He

Next morning, after the day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He had pencil and paper this time with

"What comes after millions?" he asked at noon, when Will came home from school. "An' how d'ye work

That afternoon finished his task. Each day, but without paper and pencil, he returned to the stoop. He was

greatly absorbed in the one tree that grew across the street. He studied it for hours at a time, and was

unusually interested when the wind swayed its branches and fluttered its leaves. Throughout the week he

seemed lost in a great communion with himself. On Sunday, sitting on the stoop, he laughed aloud, several

times, to the perturbation of his mother, who had not heard him laugh for years.

Next morning, in the early darkness, she came to his bed to rouse him. He had had his fill of sleep all the

week, and awoke easily. He made no struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped

"You'll be late," she said, under the impression that he was still stupid with sleep.

"I'm awake, ma, an' I tell you it ain't no use. You might as well lemme alone. I ain't goin' to git up."

She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness beyond any sickness she had ever known.

Fever and delirium she could understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him and sent

When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he awoke and allowed his pulse to be

"Nothing the matter with him," the doctor reported. "Badly debilitated, that's all. Not much meat on his

Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.

At ten o'clock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the kitchen, where he found his mother with

She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He waited patiently.

"Where?" she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing up at him with a stricken face in

As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk

What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child deny God, was Johnny's mother

"What's got into you, anyway?" she demanded, with a lame attempt at imperativeness.

"Figures," he answered. "Jes' figures. I've ben doin' a lot of figurin' this week, an' it's most surprisin'."

Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at the persistent absence of his

"I'll show you," he said. "I'm plum' tired out. What makes me tired? Moves. I've ben movin' ever since I was

born. I'm tired of movin', an' I ain't goin' to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glasshouse? I

used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten different moves to each bottle. That's

thirtysix thousan' moves a day. Ten days, three hundred an' sixty thousan' moves. One month, one million

an' eighty thousan' moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan'"he spoke with the complacent beneficence of a

philanthropist"chuck out the eighty thousan', that leaves a million moves a monthtwelve million moves

"At the looms I'm movin' twic'st as much. That makes twentyfive million moves a year, an' it seems to me

"Now this week I ain't moved at all. I ain't made one move in hours an' hours. I tell you it was swell, jes'

settin' there, hours an' hours, an' doin' nothin'. I ain't never ben happy before. I never had any time. I've ben

movin' all the time. That ain't no way to be happy. An' I ain't going to do it any more. I'm jes' goin' to set, an'

But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother's ambition for the younger boy, but

"I know, ma, what you've ben plannin' for Willkeepin' him in school to make a bookkeeper out of him.

"An' after I have brung you up the way I have," she wept, starting to cover her head with the apron and

"You never brung me up," he answered with sad kindliness. "I brung myself up, ma, an' I brung up Will. He's

bigger'n me, an' heavier, an' taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn't git enough to eat. When he come along

an' was a kid, I was workin' an' earnin' grub for him too. But that's done with. Will can go to work, same as

me, or he can go to hell, I don't care which. I'm tired. I'm goin' now. Ain't you goin' to say goodbye?"

She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was crying. He paused a moment in the

He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan delight came into his face at the sight of the lone tree.

"Jes' ain't goin' to do nothin'," he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning tone. He glanced wistfully up at the

It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took him past the jutemill. The muffled roar of the

loom room came to his ears, and he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated no one, not even the

pounding, shrieking machines. There was no bitterness in him, nothing but an inordinate hunger for rest.

The houses and factories thinned out and the open spaces increased as he approached the country. At last the

city was behind him, and he was walking down a leafy lane beside the railroad track. He did not walk like a

man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human. It was a twisted and stunted and nameless

piece of life that shambled like a sickly ape, arms loosehanging, stoopshouldered, narrowchested,

He passed by a small railroad station and lay down in the grass under a tree. All afternoon he lay there.

Sometimes he dozed, with muscles that twitched in his sleep. When awake, he lay without movement,

watching the birds or looking up at the sky through the branches of the tree above him. Once or twice he

After twilight had gone, in the first darkness of the night, a freight train rumbled into the station. When the

engine was switching cars on to the sidetrack, Johnny crept along the side of the train. He pulled open the

sidedoor of an empty boxcar and awkwardly and laboriously climbed in. He closed the door. The engine

It was because she had broken with Billy that Loretta had come visiting to Santa Clara. Billy could not

understand. His sister had reported that he had walked the floor and cried all night. Loretta had not slept all

night either, while she had wept most of the night. Daisy knew this, because it was in her arms that the

weeping had been done. And Daisy's husband, Captain Kitt, knew, too. The tears of Loretta, and the

Now Captain Kitt did not like to lose sleep. Neither did he want Loretta to marry Billynor anybody else. It

was Captain Kitt's belief that Daisy needed the help of her younger sister in the household. But he did not say

this aloud. Instead, he always insisted that Loretta was too young to think of marriage. So it was Captain

Kitt's idea that Loretta should be packed off on a visit to Mrs. Hemingway. There wouldn't be any Billy there.

Before Loretta had been at Santa Clara a week, she was convinced that Captain Kitt's idea was a good one. In

the first place, though Billy wouldn't believe it, she did not want to marry Billy. And in the second place,

though Captain Kitt wouldn't believe it, she did not want to leave Daisy. By the time Loretta had been at

Santa Clara two weeks, she was absolutely certain that she did not want to marry Billy. But she was not so

sure about not wanting to leave Daisy. Not that she loved Daisy less, but that shehad doubts.

The day of Loretta's arrival, a nebulous plan began shaping itself in Mrs. Hemingway's brain. The second day

she remarked to Jack Hemingway, her husband, that Loretta was so innocent a young thing that were it not

for her sweet guilelessness she would be positively stupid. In proof of which, Mrs. Hemingway told her

husband several things that made him chuckle. By the third day Mrs. Hemingway's plan had taken

recognizable form. Then it was that she composed a letter. On the envelope she wrote: "Mr. Edward

"Dear Ned," the letter began. She had once been violently loved by him for three weeks in her premarital

days. But she had covenanted herself to Jack Hemingway, who had prior claims, and her heart as well; and

Ned Bashford had philosophically not broken his heart over it. He merely added the experience to a large

fund of similarly collected data out of which he manufactured philosophy. Artistically and temperamentally

he was a Greek a tired Greek. He was fond of quoting from Nietzsche, in token that he, too, had passed

through the long sickness that follows upon the ardent search for truth; that he too had emerged, too

experienced, too shrewd, too profound, ever again to be afflicted by the madness of youths in their love of

truth. "'To worship appearance,'" he often quoted; "'to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole

Olympus of appearance!'" This particular excerpt he always concluded with, "'Those Greeks were

He was a fairly young Greek, jaded and worn. Women were faithless and unveracious, he heldat such

times that he had relapses and descended to pessimism from his wonted high philosophical calm. He did not

believe in the truth of women; but, faithful to his German master, he did not strip from them the airy gauzes

that veiled their untruth. He was content to accept them as appearances and to make the best of it. He was

"Jack says to be sure to say to you, 'good swimming,'" Mrs. Hemingway wrote in her letter; "and also 'to

bring your fishing duds along.'" Mrs. Hemingway wrote other things in the letter. She told him that at last she

was prepared to exhibit to him an absolutely true, unsullied, and innocent woman. "A more guileless,

immaculate bud of womanhood never blushed on the planet," was one of the several ways in which she

phrased the inducement. And to her husband she said triumphantly, "If I don't marry Ned off this time"

leaving unstated the terrible alternative that she lacked either vocabulary to express or imagination to

Contrary to all her forebodings, Loretta found that she was not unhappy at Santa Clara. Truly, Billy wrote to

her every day, but his letters were less distressing than his presence. Also, the ordeal of being away from

Daisy was not so severe as she had expected. For the first time in her life she was not lost in eclipse in the

blaze of Daisy's brilliant and mature personality. Under such favourable circumstances Loretta came rapidly

to the front, while Mrs. Hemingway modestly and shamelessly retreated into the background.

Loretta began to discover that she was not a pale orb shining by reflection. Quite unconsciously she became a

small centre of things. When she was at the piano, there was some one to turn the pages for her and to express

preferences for certain songs. When she dropped her handkerchief, there was some one to pick it up. And

there was some one to accompany her in ramblings and flower gatherings. Also, she learned to cast flies in

still pools and below savage riffles, and how not to entangle silk lines and gutleaders with the shrubbery.

Jack Hemingway did not care to teach beginners, and fished much by himself, or not at all, thus giving Ned

Bashford ample time in which to consider Loretta as an appearance. As such, she was all that his philosophy

demanded. Her blue eyes had the direct gaze of a boy, and out of his profundity he delighted in them and

forbore to shudder at the duplicity his philosophy bade him to believe lurked in their depths. She had the

grace of a slender flower, the fragility of colour and line of fine china, in all of which he pleasured greatly,

without thought of the Life Force palpitating beneath and in spite of Bernard Shawin whom he believed.

Loretta burgeoned. She swiftly developed personality. She discovered a will of her own and wishes of her

own that were not everlastingly entwined with the will and the wishes of Daisy. She was petted by Jack

Hemingway, spoiled by Alice Hemingway, and devotedly attended by Ned Bashford. They encouraged her

whims and laughed at her follies, while she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty and

delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This

desire no longer prodded her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of Billy, the

more certain she had been that she could not live away from Daisy. The more she saw of Ned Bashford, the

Ned Bashford likewise did some forgetting. He confused superficiality with profundity, and entangled

appearance with reality until he accounted them one. Loretta was different from other women. There was no

masquerade about her. She was real. He said as much to Mrs. Hemingway, and more, who agreed with him

and at the same time caught her husband's eyelid drooping down for the moment in an unmistakable wink.

It was at this time that Loretta received a letter from Billy that was somewhat different from his others. In the

main, like all his letters, it was pathological. It was a long recital of symptoms and sufferings, his

nervousness, his sleeplessness, and the state of his heart. Then followed reproaches, such as he had never

made before. They were sharp enough to make her weep, and true enough to put tragedy into her face. This

tragedy she carried down to the breakfast table. It made Jack and Mrs. Hemingway speculative, and it

But Ned caught Loretta in the afternoon in the big livingroom. She tried to turn away. He caught her hands,

and she faced him with wet lashes and trembling lips. He looked at her, silently and kindly. The lashes grew

He put his arm protectingly around her shoulder. And to his shoulder, like a tired child, she turned her face.

He thrilled in ways unusual for a Greek who has recovered from the long sickness.

He smiled indulgently, and breathed in a great breath freighted with the fragrance of her hair. He thought of

his worldexperience of women, and drew another long breath. There seemed to emanate from her the

perfect sweetness of a child"the aura of a white soul," was the way he phrased it to himself.

"What's the matter, little one?" he asked pettingly and almost paternally. "Has Jack been bullying you? Or has

She did not answer, and he felt that he really must kiss her hair, that he could not be responsible if the

He laughed incredulously, and lightly touched her hair with his lipsso lightly that she did not know.

"Dear little one, let us forget all about it, whatever it is. I want to tell you how I love"

"No . . . he . . . I didn't know. I was so young. I could not help it. Oh, I shall go mad! I shall go mad!"

It was then that Loretta felt his shoulder and the encircling arm become limp. He drew away from her gently,

and gently he deposited her in a big chair, where she buried her face and sobbed afresh. He twisted his

"That should not make any girl unhappy," he remarked sagely. "Because you don't love him is no reasonof

"No," she asserted explosively. "I don't love Billy! I don't want to love Billy!"

"Because you don't love him," Bashford resumed with confidence, "is no reason that you should be unhappy

"Now, my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles." His other hand crossed over after its mate and

rested on hers. "Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind or did not know your mind,

"Jilted!" She had raised her head and was looking at him with teardimmed eyes. "Oh, Ned, if that were all!"

"All?" he asked in a hollow voice, while his hands slowly retreated from hers. He was about to speak further,

"I know it is," she acquiesced, while she strove to control her trembling lips. Then she spoke more calmly. "I

am a wicked woman, a terribly wicked woman. No one knows how wicked I amexcept Billy."

There was a pause. Ned Bashford's face was grave, and he looked queerly at Loretta.

He debated with himself for a while, seeming, like a diver, to be preparing himself for the plunge.

"There was no one to tell me," she began. "We were with each other so much. I did not know anything of the

"Yes, of course, Billy. We were with each other so much . . . If I had only known . . . There was no one to tell

With the explosion Ned Bashford was on his feet, no longer a tired Greek, but a violently angry young man.

"Billy is not a scoundrel; he is a good man," Loretta defended, with a firmness that surprised Bashford.

"I suppose you'll be telling me next that it was all your fault," he said sarcastically.

"It was all my fault," she said steadily. "I should never have let him. I was to blame."

Bashford ceased from his pacing up and down, and when he spoke, his voice was resigned.

"All right," he said. "I don't blame you in the least, Loretta. And you have been very honest. But Billy is

"But I don't want to marry Billy!" she cried out in alarm. "Oh, Ned, you won't do that?"

Loretta buried her face in the cushioned chair back, and broke into a passionate storm of sobs.

All that Bashford could make out at first, as he listened, was: "But I don't want to leave Daisy! I don't want to

"How was I to know?Boohoo," Loretta was crying. "He didn't tell me. Nobody else ever kissed me. I

never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible . . . until, boohoo . . . until he wrote to me. I only got the letter this

"Because you said I had to marry Billy. And I don't want to marry Billy. I don't want to leave Daisy. I don't

"Now look here, Loretta, be sensible. What is this about kisses. You haven't told me everything?"

"He . . . I . . . we . . ." she began flounderingly. Then blurted out, "I let him, and he kissed me."

"In his letter I got this morning. Billy said that my . . . our . . . our kisses were terrible if we didn't get

"He said that when a woman allowed a man to kiss her, she always married himthat it was terrible if she

didn't. It was the custom, he said; and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and I don't like it. I know I'm terrible,"

"I beg your pardon," he cried, flinging away match and cigarette. "I don't want to smoke. I didn't mean that at

He bent over Loretta, caught her hands in his, then sat on the arm of the chair and softly put one arm around

"Loretta, I am a fool. I mean it. And I mean something more. I want you to be my wife."

"I wish it were the custom," she said in a faint voice, from the midst of the embrace, "because then I'd have to

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of

light shed by the street lamps at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come. He was

a shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement through the semidarkness. Also he was

very alert, like a wild animal in the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in the

darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to have escaped him.

In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried to him by his senses, he had a subtler

perception, a FEEL, of the atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he paused for a

moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of perception did he have this knowledge. For that

matter, he was not even aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment arise in which

action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he would have acted on the assumption that it contained

In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in the footfalls that came up the cross

street. Before he saw the walker, he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came into

view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street. The man that watched, noted a light that flared up in the

window of a house on the corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was conscious

identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind flitted the thought, "Wanted to know what time."

In another house one room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the feel that it was a

He was especially interested in a house across the street in the middle of the block. To this house he paid

most attention. No matter what way he looked, nor what way he walked, his looks and his steps always

returned to it. Except for an open window above the porch, there was nothing unusual about the house.

Nothing came in nor out. Nothing happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and

disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his consideration. He rallied to it each time

Despite his feel of things, he was not confident. He was supremely conscious of the precariousness of his

situation. Though unperturbed by the footfalls of the chance pedestrian, he was as keyed up and sensitive and

ready to be startled as any timorous deer. He was aware of the possibility of other intelligences prowling

about in the darkness intelligences similar to his own in movement, perception, and divination.

Far down the street he caught a glimpse of something that moved. And he knew it was no late homegoer,

but menace and danger. He whistled twice to the house across the street, then faded away shadowlike to the

corner and around the corner. Here he paused and looked about him carefully. Reassured, he peered back

around the corner and studied the object that moved and that was coming nearer. He had divined aright. It

The man went down the cross street to the next corner, from the shelter of which he watched the corner he

had just left. He saw the policeman pass by, going straight on up the street. He paralleled the policeman's

course, and from the next corner again watched him go by; then he returned the way he had come. He

whistled once to the house across the street, and after a time whistled once again. There was reassurance in

He saw a dark bulk outline itself on the roof of the porch and slowly descend a pillar. Then it came down the

steps, passed through the small iron gate, and went down the sidewalk, taking on the form of a man. He that

watched kept on his own side of the street and moved on abreast to the corner, where he crossed over and

Jim chuckled in the darkness, and waited for further information. The blocks passed by under their feet, and

"Well, how about them goods?" he asked. "What kind of a haul did you make, anyway?"

"I was too busy to figger it out, but it's fat. I can tell you that much, Jim, it's fat. I don't dast to think how fat it

Jim looked at him keenly under the street lamp of the next crossing, and saw that his face was a trifle grim

"The little cuss bit me. Hope I don't get hydrophoby. Folks gets hydrophoby from manbite sometimes, don't

"You're harder'n hell to get information from," Jim burst out irritably. "Tell us about it. You ain't goin' to lose

"I guess I choked him some," came the answer. Then, by way of explanation, "He woke up on me."

"Jim," the other said with seriousness, "it's a hangin' matter. I fixed 'm. I had to. He woke up on me. You an'

"It was a bull. But he wasn't on a little bit. Went right by an' kept a paddin' the hoof out a sight. Then I come

"I was waitin' to make sure," Matt explained. "I was mighty glad when I heard you whistle again. It's hard

work waitin'. I just sat there an' thought an' thought . . . oh, all kinds' of things. It's remarkable what a fellow'll

think about. And then there was a darn cat that kept movin' around the house all' botherin' me with its noises."

"I'm sure tellin' you, Jim, it's fat. I'm plum' anxious for another look at 'em."

Unconsciously the two men quickened their pace. Yet they did not relax from their caution. Twice they

changed their course in order to avoid policemen, and they made very sure that they were not observed when

Not until they had gained their own room on the top floor, did they scratch a match. While Jim lighted a

lamp, Matt locked the door and threw the bolts into place. As he turned, he noticed that his partner was

"Them searchlights is all right," he said, drawing forth a small pocket electric lamp and examining it. "But

we got to get a new battery. It's runnin' pretty weak. I thought once or twice it'd leave me in the dark. Funny

arrangements in that house. I near got lost. His room was on the left, an' that fooled me some."

"You told me it was on the right," Matt went on. "I guess I know what you told me, an' there's the map you

Fumbling in his vest pocket, he drew out a folded slip of paper. As he unfolded it, Jim bent over and looked.

"It does matter," Matt retorted. "It matters a lot . . . to me. I've got to run all the risk. I put my head in the trap

while you stay on the street. You got to get on to yourself an' be more careful. All right, I'll show you."

He dipped loosely into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of small diamonds. He spilled them out

From one pocket after another he continued bringing forth the spoil. There were many diamonds wrapped in

chamois skin that were larger than those in the first handful. From one pocket he brought out a handful of

"Sun dust," he remarked, as he spilled them on the table in a space by themselves.

"Just the same, they retail for a couple of dollars each," he said. "Is that all?"

"Sure it is," Jim answered with unqualified approval. "Better'n I expected. I wouldn't take a cent less than ten

"Ten thousan'," Matt sneered. "They're worth twic't that, an' I don't know anything about joolery, either. Look

He picked it out from the sparkling heap and held it near to the lamp with the air of an expert, weighing and

"A thousan' your grandmother," was Matt's scornful rejoinder. "You couldn't buy it for three."

"Wake me up! I'm dreamin'!" The sparkle of the gems was in Jim's eyes, and he began sorting out the larger

"But think how we'll live! Nothin' to do but spend the money an' go on gettin' rid of em."

Matt's eyes were beginning to sparkle, though sombrely, as his phlegmatic nature woke up.

A string of large pearls emerged from wrappings of tissue paper and chamois skin. Jim scarcely glanced at

A silence fell on the two men. Jim played with the gems, running them through his fingers, sorting them into

piles, and spreading them out flat and wide. He was a slender, weazened man, nervous, irritable, highstrung,

and anaemica typical child of the gutter, with unbeautiful twisted features, smalleyed, with face and

mouth perpetually and feverishly hungry, brutish in a catlike way, stamped to the core with degeneracy.

Matt did not finger the diamonds. He sat with chin on hands and elbows on table, blinking heavily at the

blazing array. He was in every way a contrast to the other. No city had bred him. He was heavymuscled and

hairy, gorillalike in strength and aspect. For him there was no unseen world. His eyes were full and wide

apart, and there seemed in them a certain bold brotherliness. They inspired confidence. But a closer

inspection would have shown that his eyes were just a trifle too full, just a shade too wide apart. He exceeded,

spilled over the limits of normality, and his features told lies about the man beneath.

"What in hell was he doin' with 'em all at the house?that's what I want to know. I'd athought he'd kept 'em

Matt had just been considering the vision of the throttled man as he had last looked upon him in the dim light

"There's no tellin'," he answered. "He might aben gettin' ready to chuck his pardner. He might apulled out

in the mornin' for parts unknown, if we hadn't happened along. I guess there's just as many thieves among

honest men as there is among thieves. You read about such things in the papers, Jim. Pardners is always

A queer, nervous look came into the other's eyes. Matt did not betray that he noted it, though he said

"Nothin'," he answered. "Only I was thinkin' just how funny it wasall them jools at his house. What made

The silence settled down, broken by an occasional low and nervous giggle on the part of Jim. He was

overcome by the spread of gems. It was not that he felt their beauty. He was unaware that they were beautiful

in themselves. But in them his swift imagination visioned the joys of life they would buy, and all the desires

and appetites of his diseased mind and sickly flesh were tickled by the promise they extended. He builded

wondrous, orgyhaunted castles out of their brilliant fires, and was appalled at what he builded. Then it was

that he giggled. It was all too impossible to be real. And yet there they blazed on the table before him,

"I guess we might as well count 'em," Matt said suddenly, tearing himself away from his own visions. "You

watch me an' see that it's square, because you an' me has got to be on the square, Jim. Understand?"

Jim did not like this, and betrayed it in his eyes, while Matt did not like what he saw in his partner's eyes.

"Ain't we always ben square?" the other replied, on the defensive because of the treachery already whispering

"It don't cost nothin', bein' square in hard times," Matt retorted. "It's bein' square in prosperity that counts.

When we ain't got nothin', we can't help bein' square. We're prosperous now, an' we've got to be business

"That's the talk for me," Jim approved, but deep down in the meagre soul of him,and in spite of

Matt stepped to the food shelf behind the twoburner kerosene cooking stove. He emptied the tea from a

paper bag, and from a second bag emptied some red peppers. Returning to the table with the bags, he put into

them the two sizes of small diamonds. Then he counted the large gems and wrapped them in their tissue

"Hundred an' fortyseven goodsized ones," was his inventory; "twenty real big ones; two big boys and one

He wrote the count out on a slip of memorandum paper, and made a copy of it, giving one slip to his partner

Again he had recourse to the food shelf, where he emptied the sugar from a large paper bag. Into this he

thrust the diamonds, large and small, wrapped it up in a bandanna handkerchief, and stowed it away under his

"An' you think they're worth a hundred thousan'?" Jim asked, pausing and looking up from the unlacing of his

"Sure," was the answer. "I seen a dancehouse girl down in Arizona once, with some big sparklers on her.

They wasn't real. She said if they was she wouldn't be dancin'. Said they'd be worth all of fifty thousan', an'

"Who'd work for a livin'?" Jim triumphantly demanded. "Pick an' shovel work!" he sneered. "Work like a dog

all my life, an' save all my wages, an' I wouldn't have half as much as we got tonight."

"Dish washin's about your measure, an' you couldn't get more'n twenty a month an' board. Your figgers is

'way off, but your point is well taken. Let them that likes it, work. I rode range for thirty a month when I was

He got into bed on one side. Jim put out the light and followed him in on the other side.

Jim felt in himself a guilty stir, and under his breath he cursed the other's way of asking disagreeable

"Nothin', only you seemed scared of it at first. What are you goin' to do with your share, Matt?"

"Buy a cattle ranch in Arizona an' set down an' pay other men to ride range for me. There's some several I'd

like to see askin' a job from me, damn them! An' now you shut your face, Jim. It'll be some time before I buy

But Jim lay long awake, nervous and twitching, rolling about restlessly and rolling himself wide awake every

time he dozed. The diamonds still blazed under his eyelids, and the fire of them hurt. Matt, in spite of his

heavy nature, slept lightly, like a wild animal alert in its sleep; and Jim noticed, every time he moved, that his

partner's body moved sufficiently to show that it had received the impression and that it was trembling on the

verge of awakening. For that matter, Jim did not know whether or not, frequently, the other was awake. Once,

quietly, betokening complete consciousness, Matt said to him: "Aw, go to sleep, Jim. Don't worry about them

jools. They'll keep." And Jim had thought that at that particular moment Matt had been surely asleep.

In the late morning Matt was awake with Jim's first movement, and thereafter he awoke and dozed with him

"I'm goin' out to get a paper an' some bread," Matt said. "You boil the coffee."

As Jim listened, unconsciously his gaze left Matt's face and roved to the pillow, beneath which was the

bundle wrapped in the bandanna handkerchief. On the instant Matt's face became like a wild beast's.

"Look here, Jim," he snarled. "You've got to play square. If you do me dirt, I'll fix you. Understand? I'd eat

you, Jim. You know that. I'd bite right into your throat an' eat you like that much beefsteak."

His sunburned skin was black with the surge of blood in it, and his tobaccostained teeth were exposed by

the snarling lips. Jim shivered and involuntarily cowered. There was death in the man he looked at. Only the

night before that blackfaced man had killed another with his hands, and it had not hurt his sleep. And in his

own heart Jim was aware of a sneaking guilt, of a train of thought that merited all that was threatened.

Matt passed out, leaving him still shivering. Then a hatred twisted his own face, and he softly hurled savage

curses at the door. He remembered the jewels, and hastened to the bed, feeling under the pillow for the

bandanna bundle. He crushed it with his fingers to make certain that it still contained the diamonds. Assured

that Matt had not carried them away, he looked toward the kerosene stove with a guilty start. Then he

hurriedly lighted it, filled the coffeepot at the sink, and put it over the flame.

The coffee was boiling when Matt returned, and while the latter cut the bread and put a slice of butter on the

table, Jim poured out the coffee. It was not until he sat down and had taken a few sips of the coffee, that Matt

"We was way off," he said. "I told you I didn't dast figger out how fat it was. Look at that."

"There you have it!" Matt cried. "He robbed his partnerrobbed him like a dirty thief."

"Half a million of jewels missin'," Jim read aloud. He put the paper down and stared at Matt.

"That's what I told you," the latter said. "What in hell do we know about jools? Half a million!an' the best I

They read on silently, their heads side by side, the untouched coffee growing cold; and ever and anon one or

"I'd like to seen Metzner's face when he opened the safe at the store this mornin'," Jim gloated.

"He hit the high places right away for Bujannoff's house," Matt explained. "Go on an' read."

"Was to have sailed last night at ten on the Sajoda for the South Seas steamship delayed by extra

"That's why we caught 'm in bed," Matt interrupted. "It was just luck like pickin' a fiftytoone winner."

"He didn't catch her," Matt said. "I saw his alarmclock was set at five. That'd given 'm plenty of time . . .

"Adolph Metzner in despairthe famous Haythorne pearl necklace magnificently assorted

Jim broke off to swear vilely and solemnly, concluding with, "Those damn oystereggs worth all that

"Big Brazilian gem," he read on. "Eighty thousan' dollarsmany valuable gems of the first waterseveral

"What you don't know about jools is worth knowin'," Matt smiled good humouredly.

"Theory of the sleuths," Jim read. "Thieves must have knowncleverly kept watch on Bujannoff's

actionsmust have learned his plan and trailed him to his house with the fruits of his robbery"

"Cleverhell!" Matt broke out. "That's the way reputations is made . . . in the noospapers. How'd we know

He assured himself that the door was locked and bolted, while Matt brought out the bundle in the bandanna

"Ain't they beauties, though!" Jim exclaimed at sight of the pearls; and for a time he had eyes only for them.

"An' women like them things," Matt commented. "An' they'll do everything to get 'emsell themselves,

"Not on your life," Matt retorted. "I'll commit murder for 'em, but not for their own sakes, but for sake of

what they'll get me. That's the difference. Women want the jools for themselves, an' I want the jools for the

In the middle of the afternoon Jim went out to buy food. While he was gone, Matt cleared the table of the

jewels, wrapping them up as before and putting them under the pillow. Then he lighted the kerosene stove

"Most surprising," he remarked. "Streets, an' stores, an' people just like they always was. Nothin' changed.

An' me walking along through it all a millionaire. Nobody looked at me an' guessed it."

Matt grunted unsympathetically. He had little comprehension of the lighter whims and fancies of his partner's

He unwrapped the steak and held it up for the other's inspection. Then he made the coffee and set the table,

"Don't put on too much of them red peppers," Jim warned. "I ain't used to your Mexican cookin'. You always

Matt grunted a laugh and went on with his cooking. Jim poured out the coffee, but first, into the nicked china

cup, he emptied a powder he had carried in his vest pocket wrapped in a ricepaper. He had turned his back

for the moment on his partner, but he did not dare to glance around at him. Matt placed a newspaper on the

table, and on the newspaper set the hot fryingpan. He cut the steak in half, and served Jim and himself.

"Eat her while she's hot," he counselled, and with knife and fork set the example.

"She's a dandy," was Jim's judgment, after his first mouthful. "But I tell you one thing straight. I'm never

"Hell's the matter," was the answer. "The Mexican cookin' on your ranch'd be too much for me. If I've got

hell acomin' in the next life, I'm not goin' to torment my insides in this one. Damned peppers!"

He smiled, expelled his breath forcibly to cool his burning mouth, drank some coffee, and went on eating the

"What do you think about the next life anyway, Matt?" he asked a little later, while secretly he wondered why

"Ain't no next life," Matt answered, pausing from the steak to take his first sip of coffee. "Nor heaven nor

"An' afterward?" Jim queried out of his morbid curiosity, for he knew that he looked upon a man that was

"Well, I have. He was like this beefsteak you an' me is eatin'. It was once steer cavortin' over the landscape.

But now it's just meat. That's all, just meat. An' that's what you an' me an' all people come tomeat."

Jim shook his head. "What's the use? I don't die anyway. I pass on an' live again"

"To go stealin', an' lyin' an' snivellin' through another life, an' go on that way forever an' ever an' ever?" Matt

"Maybe I'll improve," Jim suggested hopefully. "Maybe stealin' won't be necessary in the life to come."

He ceased abruptly, and stared straight before him, a frightened expression on his face.

"Nothin'. I was just wonderin'"Jim returned to himself with an effort "about this dyin', that was all."

But he could not shake off the fright that had startled him. It was as if an unseen thing of gloom had passed

him by, casting upon him the intangible shadow of its presence. He was aware of a feeling of foreboding.

Something ominous was about to happen. Calamity hovered in the air. He gazed fixedly across the table at

the other man. He could not understand. Was it that he had blundered and poisoned himself? No, Matt had

It was all his own imagination, was his next thought. It had played him tricks before. Fool! Of course it was.

Of course something was about to happen, but it was about to happen to Matt. Had not Matt drunk the whole

Jim brightened up and finished his steak, sopping bread in the gravy when the meat was gone.

Again the unseen thing of gloom had fluttered, and his being was vibrant with premonition of impending

misfortune. He felt a disruptive influence at work in the flesh of him, and in all his muscles there was a

seeming that they were about to begin to twitch. He sat back suddenly, and as suddenly leaned forward with

his elbows on the table. A tremor ran dimly through the muscles of his body. It was like the first rustling of

leaves before the oncoming of wind. He clenched his teeth. It came again, a spasmodic tensing of his

muscles. He knew panic at the revolt within his being. His muscles no longer recognized his mastery over

them. Again they spasmodically tensed, despite the will of him, for he had willed that they should not tense.

This was revolution within himself, this was anarchy; and the terror of impotence rushed up in him as his

flesh gripped and seemed to seize him in a clutch, chills running up and down his back and sweat starting on

his brow. He glanced about the room, and all the details of it smote him with a strange sense of familiarity. It

was as though he had just returned from a long journey. He looked across the table at his partner. Matt was

Matt smiled and continued to watch him. In the paroxysm that followed, Jim did not become unconscious.

His muscles tensed and twitched and knotted, hurting him and crushing him in their savage grip. And in the

midst of it all, it came to him that Matt was acting queerly. He was travelling the same road. The smile had

gone from his face, and there was on it an intent expression, as if he were listening to some inner tale of

himself and trying to divine the message. Matt got up and walked across the room and back again, then sat

"Oh, I fixed you all right," Matt said, with teeth close together and shivering body. "What did you give me?"

"I sure did, Jim; an' I didn't overdose you, neither. I cooked it in as neat as you please in your half the

Jim had made a dash for the door, and was throwing back the bolts. Matt sprang in between and shoved him

"No you don't. You'll stay right here. There ain't goin' to be any runnin' out an' makin' a poison play on the

streetnot with all them jools reposin' under the pillow. Savve? Even if you didn't die, you'd be in the hands

of the police with a whole lot of explanations comin'. Emetics is the stuff for poison. I'm just as bad bit as

you, an' I'm goin' to take a emetic. That's all they'd give you at a drug store, anyway."

He thrust Jim back into the middle of the room and shot the bolts into place. As he went across the floor to

the food shelf, he passed one hand over his brow and flung off the beaded sweat. It spattered audibly on the

floor. Jim watched agonizedly as Matt got the mustardcan and a cup and ran for the sink. He stirred a cupful

of mustard and water and drank it down. Jim had followed him and was reaching with trembling hands for

the empty cup. Again Matt shoved him away. As he mixed a second cupful, he demanded

"If you monkey with that door, I'll twist your neck. Savve? You can take yours when I'm done. An' if it saves

you, I'll twist your neck, anyway. You ain't got no chance, nohow. I told you many times what you'd get if

Matt was drinking the second cupful, and did not answer. The sweat had got into Jim's eyes, and he could

scarcely see his way to the table, where he got a cup for himself. But Matt was mixing a third cupful, and, as

And Jim supported his twitching body by holding on to the sink, the while he yearned toward the yellowish

concoction that stood for life. It was by sheer will that he stood and clung to the sink. His flesh strove to

double him up and bring him to the floor. Matt drank the third cupful, and with difficulty managed to get to a

chair and sit down. His first paroxysm was passing. The spasms that afflicted him were dying away. This

good effect he ascribed to the mustard and water. He was safe, at any rate. He wiped the sweat from his face,

and, in the interval of calm, found room for curiosity. He looked at his partner.

A spasm had shaken the mustard can out of Jim's hands, and the contents were spilled upon the floor. He

stooped to scoop some of the mustard into the cup, and the succeeding spasm doubled him upon the floor.

Jim heard him and turned toward him a stricken face, twisted with suffering and pleading. Spasm now

followed spasm till he was in convulsions, rolling on the floor and yellowing his face and hair in the mustard.

Matt laughed hoarsely at the sight, but the laugh broke midway. A tremor had run through his body. A new

paroxysm was beginning. He arose and staggered across to the sink, where, with probing forefinger, he vainly

strove to assist the action of the emetic. In the end, he clung to the sink as Jim had clung, filled with the

The other's paroxysm had passed, and he sat up, weak and fainting, too weak to rise, his forehead dripping,

his lips flecked with a foam made yellow by the mustard in which he had rolled. He rubbed his eyes with his

"What are you snifflin' about?" Matt demanded out of his agony. "All you got to do is die. An' when you die

"I . . . ain't . . . snifflin' . . . it's . . . the . . . mustard . . . stingin' . . . my . . . eyes," Jim panted with desperate

It was his last successful attempt at speech. Thereafter he babbled incoherently, pawing the air with shaking

Matt struggled back to the chair, and, doubled up on it, with his arms clasped about his knees, he fought with

his disintegrating flesh. He came out of the convulsion cool and weak. He looked to see how it went with the

He tried to soliloquize, to be facetious, to have his last grim laugh at life, but his lips made only incoherent

sounds. The thought came to him that the emetic had failed, and that nothing remained but the drug store. He

looked toward the door and drew himself to his feet. There he saved himself from falling by clutching the

chair. Another paroxysm had begun. And in the midst of the paroxysm, with his body and all the parts of it

flying apart and writhing and twisting back again into knots, he clung to the chair and shoved it before him

across the floor. The last shreds of his will were leaving him when he gained the door. He turned the key and

shot back one bolt. He fumbled for the second bolt, but failed. Then he leaned his weight against the door and

He was very businesslike, until he saw her lips tremble as she abruptly turned and led the way.

"It'll be all right, little woman," he said soothingly. "Doctor Bodineau's the man. He'll pull him through, you'll

They entered the livingroom. His glance quested apprehensively about, then turned to her.

She did not answer, but with a sudden impulse came close to him and stood motionless. She was a slender,

darkeyed woman, in whose face was stamped the strain and stress of living. But the fine lines and the

haunted look in the eyes were not the handiwork of mere worry. He knew whose handiwork it was as he

"It's no use, Mary," he said. He put his hand on her shoulder. "We've tried everything. It's a wretched

business, I know, but what else can we do? You've failed. Doctor Bodineau's all that's left."

"We've threshed that all out," he answered harshly. "You've got to buck up, now. You know what conclusion

She shook her head. "I know it. But it is terrible, the thought of his going away to fight it out alone."

"He won't be alone. There's Doctor Bodineau. And besides, it's a beautiful place."

When the door had closed behind her, he walked over to the window and looked out, drumming absently with

He turned and responded to the greeting of the man who had just entered. There was a perceptible drag to the

man's feet as he walked across toward the window and paused irresolutely halfway.

"I've changed my mind, George," he announced hurriedly and nervously. "I'm not going."

He plucked at his sleeve, shuffled with his feet, dropped his eyes, and with a strong effort raised them again

George regarded him silently, his nostrils distending and his lean fingers unconsciously crooking like an

In line and feature, there was much of resemblance between the two men; and yet, in the strongest

resemblances there was a radical difference. Theirs were the same black eyes, but those of the man at the

window were sharp and straight looking, while those of the man in the middle of the room were cloudy and

furtive. He could not face the other's gaze, and continually and vainly struggled with himself to do so. The

high cheek bones with the hollows beneath were the same, yet the texture of the hollows seemed different.

The thinlipped mouths were from the same mould, but George's lips were firm and muscular, while Al's

were soft and loosethe lips of an ascetic turned voluptuary. There was also a sag at the corners. His flesh

hinted of grossness, especially so in the eaglelike aquiline nose that must once have been like the other's, but

Al fought for steadiness in the middle of the floor. The silence bothered him. He had a feeling that he was

"And you are only twentysix years old," George said at last. "You poor, feeble old man."

"All I gave you!" George's voice rose momentarily to a higher pitch. "You licked me four afternoons out of

five. You were twice as strong as I three times as strong. And now I'd be afraid to land on you with a sofa

cushion; you'd crumple up like a last year's leaf. You'd die, you poor, miserable old man."

"You needn't abuse me just because I've changed my mind," the other protested, the hint of a whine in his

His wife entered, and he looked appealingly to her; but the man at the window strode suddenly up to him and

"You don't know your own mind for two successive minutes! You haven't any mind, you spineless, crawling

"You can't make me angry." Al smiled with cunning, and glanced triumphantly at his wife. "You can't make

me angry," he repeated, as though the idea were thoroughly gratifying to him. "I know your game. It's my

stomach, I tell you. I can't help it. Before God, I can't! Isn't it my stomach, Mary?"

She glanced at George and spoke composedly, though she hid a trembling hand in a fold of her skirt.

Her husband turned upon her savagely. "I'm not going to go!" he cried. "That's just what I've been telling . . .

"Never mind what I said!" he broke out. "I've said something else right now, and you've heard it, and that

He walked across the room and threw himself with emphasis into a Morris chair. But the other man was

swiftly upon him. The talonlike fingers gripped his shoulders, jerked him to his feet, and held him there.

"You've reached the limit, Al, and I want you to understand it. I've tried to treat you like . . . like my brother,

but hereafter I shall treat you like the thing that you are. Do you understand?"

The anger in his voice was cold. The blaze in his eyes was cold. It was vastly more effective than any

outburst, and Al cringed under it and under the clutching hand that was bruising his shoulder muscles.

"It is only because of me that you have this house, that you have the food you eat. Your position? Any other

man would have been shown the door a year agotwo years ago. I have held you in it. Your salary has been

charity. It has been paid out of my pocket. Mary . . . her dresses . . . that gown she has on is made over; she

wears the discarded dresses of her sisters, of my wife. Charitydo you understand? Your childrenthey are

wearing the discarded clothes of my children, of the children of my neighbours who think the clothes went to

He emphasized each point with an unconscious tightening of his grip on the shoulder. Al was squirming with

"Now listen well to me," his brother went on. "In three minutes you will tell me that you are going with me.

If you don't, Mary and the children will be taken away from youtoday. You needn't ever come to the

office. This house will be closed to you. And in six months I shall have the pleasure of burying you. You

Al made a strangling movement, and reached up with weak fingers to the clutching hand.

The clock on the mantle ticked loudly. George glanced at it, and at Mary. She was leaning against the table,

unable to conceal her trembling. He became unpleasantly aware of the feeling of his brother's fingers on his

hand. Quite unconsciously he wiped the back of the hand upon his coat. The clock ticked on in the silence. It

seemed to George that the room reverberated with his voice. He could hear himself still speaking.

It was a weak and shaken voice, and it was a weak and shaken man that pulled himself out of the Morris

"Suit case," came the response. "Mary'll send the trunk later. I'll be back in a minute."

The door closed after him. A moment later, struck with sudden suspicion, George was opening the door. He

glanced in. His brother stood at a sideboard, in one hand a decanter, in the other hand, bottom up and to his

Across the glass Al saw that he was observed. It threw him into a panic. Hastily he tried to refill the glass and

get it to his lips; but glass and decanter were sent smashing to the floor. He snarled. It was like the sound of a

wild beast. But the grip on his shoulder subdued and frightened him. He was being propelled toward the door.

The next moment the suit case was spread open, and George's hand was searching the contents. From one

side it brought out a bottle of whisky, from the other side a flask. He snapped the case to.

He went out into the hallway, leaving Al with his wife. It was like a funeral, George thought, as he waited.

His brother's overcoat caught on the knob of the front door and delayed its closing long enough for Mary's

first sob to come to their ears. George's lips were very thin and compressed as he went down the steps. In one

As they neared the corner, he heard the electric car a block away, and urged his brother on. Al was breathing

For reply, he received a vicious jerk on his arm. It reminded him of his childhood when he was hurried along

by some angry grownup. And like a child, he had to be helped up the car step. He sank down on an outside

seat, panting, sweating, overcome by the exertion. He followed George's eyes as the latter looked him up and

"A hell of a brother YOU are," was George's comment when he had finished the inspection.

"I don't wonder," was the retort. "Burnt out like the crater of a volcano. Fervent heat isn't a circumstance."

Thereafter they did not speak. When they arrived at the transfer point, George came to himself with a start.

He smiled. With fixed gaze that did not see the houses that streamed across his field of vision, he had himself

been sunk deep in selfpity. He helped his brother from the car, and looked up the intersecting street. The car

Al's eyes chanced upon the corner grocery and saloon across the way. At once he became restless. His hands

passed beyond his control, and he yearned hungrily across the street to the door that swung open even as he

looked and let in a happy pilgrim. And in that instant he saw the white jacketed bartender against an array of

"That was hours ago. Go on, George, let me have some. It's the last day. Don't shut off on me until we get

"I don't want a drink. I want a bottle." Al's voice became wheedling. "Go on, George. It's the last, the very

George reached for him, but was anticipated, for his brother sprawled flat on the pavement, oblivious to the

dirt and to the curious glances of the passersby. The car was clanging its gong at the crossing, a block away.

George looked at the car. It was halfway down the block. He looked at his watch. He debated a second

"All right," he said. "I'll get it. But you get on that car. If you miss it, I'll break the bottle over your head."

He dashed across the street and into the saloon. The car came in and stopped. There were no passengers to get

off. Al dragged himself up the steps and sat down. He smiled as the conductor rang the bell and the car

started. The swinging door of the saloon burst open. Clutching in his hand the suit case and a pint bottle of

whisky, George started in pursuit. The conductor, his hand on the bell cord, waited to see if it would be

necessary to stop. It was not. George swung lightly aboard, sat down beside his brother, and passed him the

"I'm sick . . . my stomach," he explained in apologetic tones to the passenger who sat next to him.

In the train they sat in the smokingcar. George felt that it was imperative. Also, having successfully caught

the train, his heart softened. He felt more kindly toward his brother, and accused himself of unnecessary

harshness. He strove to atone by talking about their mother, and sisters, and the little affairs and interests of

the family. But Al was morose, and devoted himself to the bottle. As the time passed, his mouth hung looser

and looser, while the rings under his eyes seemed to puff out and all his facial muscles to relax.

"It's my stomach," he said, once, when he finished the bottle and dropped it under the seat; but the swift

The conveyance that met them at the station had all the dignity and luxuriousness of a private carriage.

George's eyes were keen for the ear marks of the institution to which they were going, but his apprehensions

were allayed from moment to moment. As they entered the wide gateway and rolled on through the spacious

grounds, he felt sure that the institutional side of the place would not jar upon his brother. It was more like a

summer hotel, or, better yet, a country club. And as they swept on through the spring sunshine, the songs of

birds in his ears, and in his nostrils the breath of flowers, George sighed for a week of rest in such a place,

and before his eyes loomed the arid vista of summer in town and at the office. There was not room in his

"Let us take a walk in the grounds," he suggested, after they had met Doctor Bodineau and inspected the

quarters assigned to Al. "The carriage leaves for the station in half an hour, and we'll just have time."

"It's beautiful," he remarked a moment later. Under his feet was the velvet grass, the trees arched overhead,

"I'm going to send Mary and the children off to the mountains. She needs it, and so do they. And when you're

in shape, I'll send you right on to join them. Then you can take your summer vacation before you come back

"I'm not going to stay in this damned hole, for all you talk about it," Al announced abruptly.

"Yes you are, and you're going to get your health and strength back again, so that the look of you will put the

"I'm going back with you." Al's voice was firm. "I'm going to take the same train back. It's about time for that

"You might as well quit that. I don't want any of your soapy talking. You treat me like a child. I'm not a child.

My mind's made up, and I'll show you how long it can stay made up. You needn't talk to me. I don't care a rap

A baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all the world like a cornered rat, desperate

and ready to fight. As George looked at him he remembered back to their childhood, and it came to him that

at last was aroused in Al the same old stubborn strain that had enabled him, as a child, to stand against all

George abandoned hope. He had lost. This creature was not human. The last fine instinct of the human had

fled. It was a brute, sluggish and stolid, impossible to movejust the raw stuff of life, combative, rebellious,

and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt in himself the rising up of a similar brute. He

became suddenly aware that his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew the desire to

kill. And his reason, turned traitor at last, counselled that he should kill, that it was the only thing left for him

He was aroused by a servant calling to him through the trees that the carriage was waiting. He answered.

Then, looking straight before him, he discovered his brother. He had forgotten it was his brother. It had been

only a thing the moment before. He began to talk, and as he talked the way became clear to him. His reason

"You are no earthly good, Al, " he said. "You know that. You've made Mary's life a hell. You are a curse to

your children. And you have not made life exactly a paradise for the rest of us."

"That's what I'm coming to," George continued. "You don't have to stay here." (Al's face brightened, and he

involuntarily made a movement, as though about to start toward the carriage.) "On the other hand, it is not

George's hand went to his hip pocket and appeared with a revolver. It lay along his palm, the butt toward Al,

and toward Al he extended it. At the same time, with his head, he indicated the nearby thicket.

"It is not a bluff, Al. Look at me. I mean it. And if you don't do it for yourself, I shall have to do it for you."

They faced each other, the proffered revolver still extended. Al debated for a moment, then his eyes blazed.

George felt suddenly sick. He turned away. He did not see his brother enter the thicket, but he heard the

George felt the sweat upon his forehead. He began mopping his face with his handkerchief. He heard, as from

a remote distance, the voice of the servant again calling to him that the carriage was waiting. The woodpecker

dropped down through the mottled sunshine and lighted on the trunk of a tree a dozen feet away. George felt

that it was all a dream, and yet through it all he felt supreme justification. It was the right thing to do. It was

His whole body gave a spasmodic start, as though the revolver had been fired. It was the voice of Al, close at

The servant appeared among the trees, approaching rapidly and calling anxiously. George put the weapon in

"God bless you, old man," he murmured ; "and"with a final squeeze of the hands"good luck!"

"I'm coming," he called to the servant, and turned and ran through the trees toward the carriage.

Ah Cho did not understand French. He sat in the crowded court room, very weary and bored, listening to the

unceasing, explosive French that now one official and now another uttered. It was just so much gabble to Ah

Cho, and he marvelled at the stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long to find out the murderer of Chung

Ga, and who did not find him at all. The five hundred coolies on the plantation knew that Ah San had done

the killing, and here was Ah San not even arrested. It was true that all the coolies had agreed secretly not to

testify against one another; but then, it was so simple, the Frenchmen should have been able to discover that

Ah Cho had done nothing of which to be afraid. He had had no hand in the killing. It was true he had been

present at it, and Schemmer, the overseer on the plantation, had rushed into the barracks immediately

afterward and caught him there, along with four or five others; but what of that? Chung Ga had been stabbed

only twice. It stood to reason that five or six men could not inflict two stab wounds. At the most, if a man had

So it was that Ah Cho reasoned, when he, along with his four companions, had lied and blocked and

obfuscated in their statements to the court concerning what had taken place. They had heard the sounds of the

killing, and, like Schemmer, they had run to the spot. They had got there before Schemmerthat was all.

True, Schemmer had testified that, attracted by the sound of quarrelling as he chanced to pass by, he had

stood for at least five minutes outside; that then, when he entered, he found the prisoners already inside; and

that they had not entered just before, because he had been standing by the one door to the barracks. But what

of that? Ah Cho and his four fellowprisoners had testified that Schemmer was mistaken. In the end they

would be let go. They were all confident of that. Five men could not have their heads cut off for two stab

wounds. Besides, no foreign devil had seen the killing. But these Frenchmen were so stupid. In China, as Ah

Cho well knew, the magistrate would order all of them to the torture and learn the truth. The truth was very

easy to learn under torture. But these Frenchmen did not torturebigger fools they! Therefore they would

But Ah Cho did not understand everything. The English Company that owned the plantation had imported

into Tahiti, at great expense, the five hundred coolies. The stockholders were clamouring for dividends, and

the Company had not yet paid any; wherefore the Company did not want its costly contract labourers to start

the practice of killing one another. Also, there were the French, eager and willing to impose upon the

Chinagos the virtues and excellences of French law. There was nothing like setting an example once in a

while; and, besides, of what use was New Caledonia except to send men to live out their days in misery and

Ah Cho did not understand all this. He sat in the court room and waited for the baffled judgment that would

set him and his comrades free to go back to the plantation and work out the terms of their contracts. This

judgment would soon be rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close. He could see that. There was no

more testifying, no more gabble of tongues. The French devils were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the

judgment. And as he waited he remembered back in his life to the time when he had signed the contract and

set sail in the ship for Tahiti. Times had been hard in his seacoast village, and when he indentured himself to

labour for five years in the South Seas at fifty cents Mexican a day, he had thought himself fortunate. There

were men in his village who toiled a whole year for ten dollars Mexican, and there were women who made

nets all the year round for five dollars, while in the houses of shopkeepers there were maidservants who

received four dollars for a year of service. And here he was to receive fifty cents a day; for one day, only one

day, he was to receive that princely sum! What if the work were hard? At the end of the five years he would

return homethat was in the contractand he would never have to work again. He would be a rich man for

life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he

would have a small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind bells

tinkling in the several trees, and there would be a high wall all around so that his meditation and repose

Well, he had worked out three of those five years. He was already a wealthy man (in his own country)

through his earnings, and only two years more intervened between the cotton plantation on Tahiti and the

meditation and repose that awaited him. But just now he was losing money because of the unfortunate

accident of being present at the killing of Chung Ga. He had lain three weeks in prison, and for each day of

those three weeks he had lost fifty cents. But now judgment would soon be given, and he would go back to

Ah Cho was twentytwo years old. He was happy and goodnatured, and it was easy for him to smile. While

his body was slim in the Asiatic way, his face was rotund. It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a

gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual among his countrymen. Nor did his

looks belie him. He never caused trouble, never took part in wrangling. He did not gamble. His soul was not

harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was content with little things and simple

pleasures. The hush and quiet in the cool of the day after the blazing toil in the cotton field was to him an

infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries

and riddles of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying fish, or a

sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of

Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute, a brutish brute. But he earned his salary. He got the last particle of

strength out of the five hundred slaves; for slaves they were until their term of years was up. Schemmer

worked hard to extract the strength from those five hundred sweating bodies and to transmute it into bales of

fluffy cotton ready for export. His dominant, ironclad, primeval brutishness was what enabled him to effect

the transmutation. Also, he was assisted by a thick leather belt, three inches wide and a yard in length, with

which he always rode and which, on occasion, could come down on the naked back of a stooping coolie with

a report like a pistolshot. These reports were frequent when Schemmer rode down the furrowed field.

Once, at the beginning of the first year of contract labour, he had killed a coolie with a single blow of his fist.

He had not exactly crushed the man's head like an eggshell, but the blow had been sufficient to addle what

was inside, and, after being sick for a week, the man had died. But the Chinese had not complained to the

French devils that ruled over Tahiti. It was their own look out. Schemmer was their problem. They must

avoid his wrath as they avoided the venom of the centipedes that lurked in the grass or crept into the sleeping

quarters on rainy nights. The Chinagos such they were called by the indolent, brownskinned island

folksaw to it that they did not displease Schemmer too greatly. This was equivalent to rendering up to him

a full measure of efficient toil. That blow of Schemmer's fist had been worth thousands of dollars to the

The French, with no instinct for colonization, futile in their childish playgame of developing the resources of

the island, were only too glad to see the English Company succeed. What matter of Schemmer and his

redoubtable fist? The Chinago that died? Well, he was only a Chinago. Besides, he died of sunstroke, as the

doctor's certificate attested. True, in all the history of Tahiti no one had ever died of sunstroke. But it was

that, precisely that, which made the death of this Chinago unique. The doctor said as much in his report. He

was very candid. Dividends must be paid, or else one more failure would be added to the long history of

There was no understanding these white devils. Ah Cho pondered their inscrutableness as he sat in the court

room waiting the judgment. There was no telling what went on at the back of their minds. He had seen a few

of the white devils. They were all alikethe officers and sailors on the ship, the French officials, the several

white men on the plantation, including Schemmer. Their minds all moved in mysterious ways there was no

getting at. They grew angry without apparent cause, and their anger was always dangerous. They were like

wild beasts at such times. They worried about little things, and on occasion could outtoil even a Chinago.

They were not temperate as Chinagos were temperate; they were gluttons, eating prodigiously and drinking

more prodigiously. A Chinago never knew when an act would please them or arouse a storm of wrath. A

Chinago could never tell. What pleased one time, the very next time might provoke an outburst of anger.

There was a curtain behind the eyes of the white devils that screened the backs of their minds from the

Chinago's gaze. And then, on top of it all, was that terrible efficiency of the white devils, that ability to do

things, to make things go, to work results, to bend to their wills all creeping, crawling things, and the powers

of the very elements themselves. Yes, the white men were strange and wonderful, and they were devils. Look

Ah Cho wondered why the judgment was so long in forming. Not a man on trial had laid hand on Chung Ga.

Ah San alone had killed him. Ah San had done it, bending Chung Ga's head back with one hand by a grip of

his queue, and with the other hand, from behind, reaching over and driving the knife into his body. Twice had

he driven it in. There in the court room, with closed eyes, Ah Cho saw the killing acted over againthe

squabble, the vile words bandied back and forth, the filth and insult flung upon venerable ancestors, the

curses laid upon unbegotten generations, the leap of Ah San, the grip on the queue of Chung Ga, the knife

that sank twice into his flesh, the bursting open of the door, the irruption of Schemmer, the dash for the door,

the escape of Ah San, the flying belt of Schemmer that drove the rest into the corner, and the firing of the

revolver as a signal that brought help to Schemmer. Ah Cho shivered as he lived it over. One blow of the belt

had bruised his cheek, taking off some of the skin. Schemmer had pointed to the bruises when, on the

witnessstand, he had identified Ah Cho. It was only just now that the marks had become no longer visible.

That had been a blow. Half an inch nearer the centre and it would have taken out his eye. Then Ah Cho forgot

the whole happening in a vision he caught of the garden of meditation and repose that would be his when he

He sat with impassive face, while the magistrate rendered the judgment. Likewise were the faces of his four

companions impassive. And they remained impassive when the interpreter explained that the five of them had

been found guilty of the murder of Chung Ga, and that Ah Chow should have his head cut off, Ah Cho serve

twenty years in prison in New Caledonia, Wong Li twelve years, and Ah Tong ten years. There was no use in

getting excited about it. Even Ah Chow remained expressionless as a mummy, though it was his head that

was to be cut off. The magistrate added a few words, and the interpreter explained that Ah Chow's face

having been most severely bruised by Schemmer's strap had made his identification so positive that, since

one man must die, he might as well be that man. Also, the fact that Ah Cho's face likewise had been severely

bruised, conclusively proving his presence at the murder and his undoubted participation, had merited him the

twenty years of penal servitude. And down to the ten years of Ah Tong, the proportioned reason for each

sentence was explained. Let the Chinagos take the lesson to heart, the Court said finally, for they must learn

The five Chinagos were taken back to jail. They were not shocked nor grieved. The sentences being

unexpected was quite what they were accustomed to in their dealings with the white devils. From them a

Chinago rarely expected more than the unexpected. The heavy punishment for a crime they had not

committed was no stranger than the countless strange things that white devils did. In the weeks that followed,

Ah Cho often contemplated Ah Chow with mild curiosity. His head was to be cut off by the guillotine that

was being erected on the plantation. For him there would be no declining years, no gardens of tranquillity. Ah

Cho philosophized and speculated about life and death. As for himself, he was not perturbed. Twenty years

were merely twenty years. By that much was his garden removed from himthat was all. He was young, and

the patience of Asia was in his bones. He could wait those twenty years, and by that time the heats of his

blood would be assuaged and he would be better fitted for that garden of calm delight. He thought of a name

for it; he would call it The Garden of the Morning Calm. He was made happy all day by the thought, and he

was inspired to devise a moral maxim on the virtue of patience, which maxim proved a great comfort,

especially to Wong Li and Ah Tong. Ah Chow, however, did not care for the maxim. His head was to be

separated from his body in so short a time that he had no need for patience to wait for that event. He smoked

Cruchot was a gendarme. He had seen twenty years of service in the colonies, from Nigeria and Senegal to

the South Seas, and those twenty years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as slowwitted

and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He knew discipline and fear of authority, and from

God down to the sergeant of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish obedience

which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked bigger in his mind than God, except on Sundays

when God's mouthpieces had their say. God was usually very remote, while the sergeant was ordinarily very

Cruchot it was who received the order from the Chief Justice to the jailer commanding that functionary to

deliver over to Cruchot the person of Ah Chow. Now, it happened that the Chief Justice had given a dinner

the night before to the captain and officers of the French manofwar. His hand was shaking when he wrote

out the order, and his eyes were aching so dreadfully that he did not read over the order. It was only a

Chinago's life he was signing away, anyway. So he did not notice that he had omitted the final letter in Ah

Chow's name. The order read "Ah Cho," and, when Cruchot presented the order, the jailer turned over to him

the person of Ah Cho. Cruchot took that person beside him on the seat of a wagon, behind two mules, and

Ah Cho was glad to be out in the sunshine. He sat beside the gendarme and beamed. He beamed more

ardently than ever when he noted the mules headed south toward Atimaono. Undoubtedly Schemmer had sent

for him to be brought back. Schemmer wanted him to work. Very well, he would work well. Schemmer

would never have cause to complain. It was a hot day. There had been a stoppage of the trades. The mules

sweated, Cruchot sweated, and Ah Cho sweated. But it was Ah Cho that bore the heat with the least concern.

He had toiled three years under that sun on the plantation. He beamed and beamed with such genial good

Ah Cho nodded and beamed more ardently. Unlike the magistrate, Cruchot spoke to him in the Kanaka

"You laugh too much," Cruchot chided. "One's heart should be full of tears on a day like this."

"Why, I am going back to Atimaono to work on the plantation for Schemmer. Are you not taking me to

Cruchot stroked his long moustaches reflectively. "Well, well," he said finally, with a flick of the whip at the

"Know what?" Ah Cho was beginning to feel a vague alarm. "Won't Schemmer let me work for him any

"Not after today." Cruchot laughed heartily. It was a good joke. "You see, you won't be able to work after

today. A man with his head off can't work, eh?" He poked the Chinago in the ribs, and chuckled.

Ah Cho maintained silence while the mules trotted a hot mile. Then he spoke: "Is Schemmer going to cut off

"It is a mistake," said Ah Cho, gravely. "I am not the Chinago that is to have his head cut off. I am Ah Cho.

The honourable judge has determined that I am to stop twenty years in New Caledonia."

The gendarme laughed. It was a good joke, this funny Chinago trying to cheat the guillotine. The mules

trotted through a coconut grove and for half a mile beside the sparkling sea before Ah Cho spoke again.

"I tell you I am not Ah Chow. The honourable judge did not say that my head was to go off."

"Don't be afraid," said Cruchot, with the philanthropic intention of making it easier for his prisoner. "It is not

difficult to die that way." He snapped his fingers. "It is quicklike that. It is not like hanging on the end of a

rope and kicking and making faces for five minutes. It is like killing a chicken with a hatchet. You cut its

head off, that is all. And it is the same with a man. Pouf!it is over. It doesn't hurt. You don't even think it

hurts. You don't think. Your head is gone, so you cannot think. It is very good. That is the way I want to

diequick, ah, quick. You are lucky to die that way. You might get the leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a

finger at a time, and now and again a thumb, also the toes. I knew a man who was burned by hot water. It

took him two days to die. You could hear him yelling a kilometre away. But you? Ah! so easy! Chck!the

knife cuts your neck like that. It is finished. The knife may even tickle. Who can say? Nobody who died that

He considered this last an excruciating joke, and permitted himself to be convulsed with laughter for half a

minute. Part of his mirth was assumed, but he considered it his humane duty to cheer up the Chinago.

"But I tell you I am Ah Cho," the other persisted. "I don't want my head cut off."

"That will do," the gendarme interrupted. He puffed up his cheeks and strove to appear fierce.

After that they rode along in silence. It was twenty miles from Papeete to Atimaono, and over half the

"I saw you in the court room, when the honourable judge sought after our guilt," he began. "Very good. And

do you remember that Ah Chow, whose head is to be cut offdo you remember that heAh Chowwas a

He stood up suddenly, and Cruchot saw that he was a short man. And just as suddenly Cruchot caught a

glimpse of a memory picture of Ah Chow, and in that picture Ah Chow was tall. To the gendarme all

Chinagos looked alike. One face was like another. But between tallness and shortness he could differentiate,

and he knew that he had the wrong man beside him on the seat. He pulled up the mules abruptly, so that the

But Cruchot was thinking. Already he regretted that he had stopped the wagon. He was unaware of the error

of the Chief Justice, and he had no way of working it out; but he did know that he had been given this

Chinago to take to Atimaono and that it was his duty to take him to Atimaono. What if he was the wrong man

and they cut his head off? It was only a Chinago when all was said, and what was a Chinago, anyway?

Besides, it might not be a mistake. He did not know what went on in the minds of his superiors. They knew

their business best. Who was he to do their thinking for them? Once, in the long ago, he had attempted to

think for them, and the sergeant had said: "Cruchot, you are a fool? The quicker you know that, the better you

will get on. You are not to think; you are to obey and leave thinking to your betters." He smarted under the

recollection. Also, if he turned back to Papeete, he would delay the execution at Atimaono, and if he were

wrong in turning back, he would get a reprimand from the sergeant who was waiting for the prisoner. And,

He touched the mules with the whip and drove on. He looked at his watch. He would be half an hour late as it

was, and the sergeant was bound to be angry. He put the mules into a faster trot. The more Ah Cho persisted

in explaining the mistake, the more stubborn Cruchot became. The knowledge that he had the wrong man did

not make his temper better. The knowledge that it was through no mistake of his confirmed him in the belief

that the wrong he was doing was the right. And, rather than incur the displeasure of the sergeant, he would

As for Ah Cho, after the gendarme had struck him over the head with the butt of the whip and commanded

him in a loud voice to shut up, there remained nothing for him to do but to shut up. The long ride continued

in silence. Ah Cho pondered the strange ways of the foreign devils. There was no explaining them. What they

were doing with him was of a piece with everything they did. First they found guilty five innocent men, and

next they cut off the head of the man that even they, in their benighted ignorance, had deemed meritorious of

no more than twenty years' imprisonment. And there was nothing he could do. He could only sit idly and take

what these lords of life measured out to him. Once, he got in a panic, and the sweat upon his body turned

cold; but he fought his way out of it. He endeavoured to resign himself to his fate by remembering and

repeating certain passages from the "Yin Chih Wen" ("The Tract of the Quiet Way"); but, instead, he kept

seeing his dreamgarden of meditation and repose. This bothered him, until he abandoned himself to the

dream and sat in his garden listening to the tinkling of the windbells in the several trees. And lo! sitting thus,

in the dream, he was able to remember and repeat the passages from "The Tract of the Quiet Way."

So the time passed nicely until Atimaono was reached and the mules trotted up to the foot of the scaffold, in

the shade of which stood the impatient sergeant. Ah Cho was hurried up the ladder of the scaffold. Beneath

him on one side he saw assembled all the coolies of the plantation. Schemmer had decided that the event

would be a good objectlesson, and so he called in the coolies from the fields and compelled them to be

present. As they caught sight of Ah Cho they gabbled among themselves in low voices. They saw the

mistake; but they kept it to themselves. The inexplicable white devils had doubtlessly changed their minds.

Instead of taking the life of one innocent man, they were taking the life of another innocent man. Ah Chow or

Ah Chowhat did it matter which? They could never understand the white dogs any more than could the

white dogs understand them. Ah Cho was going to have his head cut off, but they, when their two remaining

Schemmer had made the guillotine himself. He was a handy man, and though he had never seen a guillotine,

the French officials had explained the principle to him. It was on his suggestion that they had ordered the

execution to take place at Atimaono instead of at Papeete. The scene of the crime, Schemmer had argued, was

the best possible place for the punishment, and, in addition, it would have a salutary influence upon the

halfthousand Chinagos on the plantation. Schemmer had also volunteered to act as executioner, and in that

capacity he was now on the scaffold, experimenting with the instrument he had made. A banana tree, of the

size and consistency of a man's neck, lay under the guillotine. Ah Cho watched with fascinated eyes. The

German, turning a small crank, hoisted the blade to the top of the little derrick he had rigged. A jerk on a

stout piece of cord loosed the blade and it dropped with a flash, neatly severing the banana trunk.

"How does it work?" The sergeant, coming out on top the scaffold, had asked the question.

Again he turned the crank that hoisted the blade, jerked the cord, and sent the blade crashing down on the soft

Schemmer wiped the sweat from his forehead. "What it needs is more weight," he announced. Walking up to

the edge of the scaffold, he called his orders to the blacksmith for a twentyfivepound piece of iron. As he

stooped over to attach the iron to the broad top of the blade, Ah Cho glanced at the sergeant and saw his

"The honourable judge said that Ah Chow was to have his head cut off," he began.

The sergeant nodded impatiently. He was thinking of the fifteenmile ride before him that afternoon, to the

windward side of the island, and of Berthe, the pretty halfcaste daughter of Lafiere, the pearltrader, who

"Well, I am not Ah Chow. I am Ah Cho. The honourable jailer has made a mistake. Ah Chow is a tall man,

The sergeant looked at him hastily and saw the mistake. "Schemmer!" he called, imperatively. "Come here."

The German grunted, but remained bent over his task till the chunk of iron was lashed to his satisfaction. "Is

Schemmer was surprised. He swore tersely for a few seconds, and looked regretfully across at the thing he

had made with his own hands and which he was eager to see work. "Look here," he said finally, "we can't

postpone this affair. I've lost three hours' work already out of those five hundred Chinagos. I can't afford to

lose it all over again for the right man. Let's put the performance through just the same. It is only a Chinago."

The sergeant remembered the long ride before him, and the pearltrader's daughter, and debated with himself.

"They will blame it on Cruchotif it is discovered," the German urged. "But there's little chance of its being

"The blame won't lie with Cruchot, anyway," the sergeant said. "It must have been the jailer's mistake."

"Then let's go on with it. They can't blame us. Who can tell one Chinago from another? We can say that we

merely carried out instructions with the Chinago that was turned over to us. Besides, I really can't take all

They spoke in French, and Ah Cho, who did not understand a word of it, nevertheless knew that they were

determining his destiny. He knew, also, that the decision rested with the sergeant, and he hung upon that

"I'm going to try it once more, just to make sure." Schemmer moved the banana trunk forward under the

Ah Cho tried to remember maxims from "The Tract of the Quiet Way." "Live in concord," came to him; but it

was not applicable. He was not going to live. He was about to die. No, that would not do. "Forgive

malice"yes, but there was no malice to forgive. Schemmer and the rest were doing this thing without

malice. It was to them merely a piece of work that had to be done, just as clearing the jungle, ditching the

water, and planting cotton were pieces of work that had to be done. Schemmer jerked the cord, and Ah Cho

forgot "The Tract of the Quiet Way." The knife shot down with a thud, making a clean slice of the tree.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the sergeant, pausing in the act of lighting a cigarette. "Beautiful, my friend."

"Shut up!" was the answer. "If you open your mouth again, I'll break your head."

The overseer threatened him with a clenched fist, and he remained silent. What was the good of protesting?

Those foreign devils always had their way. He allowed himself to be lashed to the vertical board that was the

size of his body. Schemmer drew the buckles tightso tight that the straps cut into his flesh and hurt. But he

did not complain. The hurt would not last long. He felt the board tilting over in the air toward the horizontal,

and closed his eyes. And in that moment he caught a last glimpse of his garden of meditation and repose. It

seemed to him that he sat in the garden. A cool wind was blowing, and the bells in the several trees were

tinkling softly. Also, birds were making sleepy noises, and from beyond the high wall came the subdued

Then he was aware that the board had come to rest, and from muscular pressures and tensions he knew that

he was lying on his back. He opened his eyes. Straight above him he saw the suspended knife blazing in the

sunshine. He saw the weight which had been added, and noted that one of Schemmer's knots had slipped.

Then he heard the sergeant's voice in sharp command. Ah Cho closed his eyes hastily. He did not want to see

that knife descend. But he felt itfor one great fleeting instant. And in that instant he remembered Cruchot

and what Cruchot had said. But Cruchot was wrong. The knife did not tickle. That much he knew before he

For seven weeks the Mary Rogers had been between 5O degrees south in the Atlantic and 5O degrees south

in the Pacific, which meant that for seven weeks she had been struggling to round Cape Horn. For seven

weeks she had been either in dirt, or close to dirt, save once, and then, following upon six days of excessive

dirt, which she had ridden out under the shelter of the redoubtable Terra del Fuego coast, she had almost gone

ashore during a heavy swell in the dead calm that had suddenly fallen. For seven weeks she had wrestled with

the Cape Horn graybeards, and in return been buffeted and smashed by them. She was a wooden ship, and her

ceaseless straining had opened her seams, so that twice a day the watch took its turn at the pumps.

The Mary Rogers was strained, the crew was strained, and big Dan Cullen, master, was likewise strained.

Perhaps he was strained most of all, for upon him rested the responsibility of that titanic struggle. He slept

most of the time in his clothes, though he rarely slept. He haunted the deck at night, a great, burly, robust

ghost, black with the sunburn of thirty years of sea and hairy as an orangoutang. He, in turn, was haunted by

one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn: Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! It was

an obsession. He thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending such bitter weather.

Make westing! He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with the iron Cape bearing eastbynorth,

or northnortheast, a score of miles away. And each time the eternal west wind smote him back and he

made easting. He fought gale after gale, south to 64 degrees, inside the antarctic driftice, and pledged his

immortal soul to the Powers of Darkness for a bit of westing, for a slant to take him around. And he made

easting. In despair, he had tried to make the passage through the Straits of Le Maire. Halfway through, the

wind hauled to the north'ard of north west, the glass dropped to 28.88, and he turned and ran before a gale of

cyclonic fury, missing, by a hair'sbreadth, piling up the Mary Rogers on the blacktoothed rocks. Twice he

had made west to the Diego Ramirez Rocks, one of the times saved between two snowsqualls by sighting

Blow! Captain Dan Cullen instanced all his thirty years at sea to prove that never had it blown so before. The

Mary Rogers was hove to at the time he gave the evidence, and, to clinch it, inside half an hour the Mary

Rogers was hove down to the hatches. Her new maintopsail and brand new spencer were blown away like

tissue paper; and five sails, furled and fast under double gaskets, were blown loose and stripped from the

yards. And before morning the Mary Rogers was hove down twice again, and holes were knocked in her

On an average of once a week Captain Dan Cullen caught glimpses of the sun. Once, for ten minutes, the sun

shone at midday, and ten minutes afterward a new gale was piping up, both watches were shortening sail, and

all was buried in the obscurity of a driving snowsquall. For a fortnight, once, Captain Dan Cullen was

without a meridian or a chronometer sight. Rarely did he know his position within half of a degree, except

when in sight of land; for sun and stars remained hidden behind the sky, and it was so gloomy that even at the

best the horizons were poor for accurate observations. A gray gloom shrouded the world. The clouds were

gray; the great driving seas were leaden gray; the smoking crests were a gray churning; even the occasional

albatrosses were gray, while the snow flurries were not white, but gray, under the sombre pall of the

Life on board the Mary Rogers was graygray and gloomy. The faces of the sailors were bluegray; they

were afflicted with seacuts and seaboils, and suffered exquisitely. They were shadows of men. For seven

weeks, in the forecastle or on deck, they had not known what it was to be dry. They had forgotten what it was

to sleep out a watch, and all watches it was, "All hands on deck!" They caught snatches of agonized sleep,

and they slept in their oilskins ready for the everlasting call. So weak and worn were they that it took both

watches to do the work of one. That was why both watches were on deck so much of the time. And no

shadow of a man could shirk duty. Nothing less than a broken leg could enable a man to knock off work; and

there were two such, who had been mauled and pulped by the seas that broke aboard.

One other man who was the shadow of a man was George Dorety. He was the only passenger on board, a

friend of the firm, and he had elected to make the voyage for his health. But seven weeks of Cape Horn had

not bettered his health. He gasped and panted in his bunk through the long, heaving nights; and when on deck

he was so bundled up for warmth that he resembled a peripatetic oldclothes shop. At midday, eating at the

cabin table in a gloom so deep that the swinging sealamps burned always, he looked as blue gray as the

sickest, saddest man for'ard. Nor did gazing across the table at Captain Dan Cullen have any cheering effect

upon him. Captain Cullen chewed and scowled and kept silent. The scowls were for God, and with every

chew he reiterated the sole thought of his existence, which was make westing. He was a big, hairy brute, and

the sight of him was not stimulating to the other's appetite. He looked upon George Dorety as a Jonah, and

told him so, once each meal, savagely transferring the scowl from God to the passenger and back again.

Nor did the mate prove a first aid to a languid appetite. Joshua Higgins by name, a seaman by profession and

pull, but a potwolloper by capacity, he was a loosejointed, sniffling creature, heartless and selfish and

cowardly, without a soul, in fear of his life of Dan Cullen, and a bully over the sailors, who knew that behind

the mate was Captain Cullen, the lawgiver and compeller, the driver and the destroyer, the incarnation of a

dozen bucko mates. In that wild weather at the southern end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His

grimy face usually robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate. Ordinarily this

lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was

filled with making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory thereto. Whether the mate's

face was clean or dirty had no bearing upon westing. Later on, when 5O degrees south in the Pacific had been

reached, Joshua Higgins would wash his face very abruptly. In the meantime, at the cabin table, where gray

twilight alternated with lamplight while the lamps were being filled, George Dorety sat between the two men,

one a tiger and the other a hyena, and wondered why God had made them. The second mate, Matthew Turner,

was a true sailor and a man, but George Dorety did not have the solace of his company, for he ate by himself,

On Saturday morning, July 24, George Dorety awoke to a feeling of life and headlong movement. On deck he

found the Mary Rogers running off before a howling southeaster. Nothing was set but the lower topsails and

the foresail. It was all she could stand, yet she was making fourteen knots, as Mr. Turner shouted in Dorety's

ear when he came on deck. And it was all westing. She was going around the Horn at last . . . if the wind

held. Mr. Turner looked happy. The end of the struggle was in sight. But Captain Cullen did not look happy.

He scowled at Dorety in passing. Captain Cullen did not want God to know that he was pleased with that

wind. He had a conception of a malicious God, and believed in his secret soul that if God knew it was a

desirable wind, God would promptly efface it and send a snorter from the west. So he walked softly before

God, smothering his joy down under scowls and muttered curses, and, so, fooling God, for God was the only

All Saturday and Saturday night the Mary Rogers raced her westing. Persistently she logged her fourteen

knots, so that by Sunday morning she had covered three hundred and fifty miles. If the wind held, she would

make around. If it failed, and the snorter came from anywhere between southwest and north, back the Mary

Rogers would be hurled and be no better off than she had been seven weeks before. And on Sunday morning

the wind was failing. The big sea was going down and running smooth. Both watches were on deck setting

sail after sail as fast as the ship could stand it. And now Captain Cullen went around brazenly before God,

smoking a big cigar, smiling jubilantly, as if the failing wind delighted him, while down underneath he was

raging against God for taking the life out of the blessed wind. Make westing! So he would, if God would only

leave him alone. Secretly, he pledged himself anew to the Powers of Darkness, if they would let him make

westing. He pledged himself so easily because he did not believe in the Powers of Darkness. He really

believed only in God, though he did not know it. And in his inverted theology God was really the Prince of

Darkness. Captain Cullen was a devilworshipper, but he called the devil by another name, that was all.

At midday, after calling eight bells, Captain Cullen ordered the royals on. The men went aloft faster than they

had gone in weeks. Not alone were they nimble because of the westing, but a benignant sun was shining

down and limbering their stiff bodies. George Dorety stood aft, near Captain Cullen, less bundled in clothes

than usual, soaking in the grateful warmth as he watched the scene. Swiftly and abruptly the incident

occurred. There was a cry from the foreroyalyard of "Man overboard!" Somebody threw a lifebuoy over

the side, and at the same instant the second mate's voice came aft, ringing and peremptory

The man at the wheel never moved a spoke. He knew better, for Captain Dan Cullen was standing alongside

of him. He wanted to move a spoke, to move all the spokes, to grind the wheel down, hard down, for his

comrade drowning in the sea. He glanced at Captain Dan Cullen, and Captain Dan Cullen gave no sign.

But he ceased springing and commanding, and stood still, when he saw Dan Cullen by the wheel. And big

Dan Cullen puffed at his cigar and said nothing. Astern, and going astern fast, could be seen the sailor. He

had caught the lifebuoy and was clinging to it. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The men aloft clung to the

royal yards and watched with terrorstricken faces. And the Mary Rogers raced on, making her westing. A

Mops topped a wave astern and disappeared temporarily in the trough. It was a large wave, but it was no

graybeard. A small boat could live easily in such a sea, and in such a sea the Mary Rogers could easily come

For the first time in all his years, George Dorety was seeing a real drama of life and deatha sordid little

drama in which the scales balanced an unknown sailor named Mops against a few miles of longitude. At first

he had watched the man astern, but now he watched big Dan Cullen, hairy and black, vested with power of

Captain Dan Cullen smoked another long, silent minute. Then he removed the cigar from his mouth. He

Fifteen minutes later they sat at table, in the cabin, with food served before them. On one side of George

Dorety sat Dan Cullen, the tiger, on the other side, Joshua Higgins, the hyena. Nobody spoke. On deck the

men were sheeting home the skysails. George Dorety could hear their cries, while a persistent vision haunted

him of a man called Mops, alive and well, clinging to a lifebuoy miles astern in that lonely ocean. He

glanced at Captain Cullen, and experienced a feeling of nausea, for the man was eating his food with relish,

"Captain Cullen," Dorety said, "you are in command of this ship, and it is not proper for me to comment now

upon what you do. But I wish to say one thing. There is a hereafter, and yours will be a hot one."

"He fell from the royalyard," Dorety cried hotly. "You were setting the royals at the time. Fifteen minutes

"It was a living gale, wasn't it, Mr. Higgin?" Captain Cullen said, turning to the mate.

"If you'd brought her to, it'd have taken the sticks out of her," was the mate's answer. "You did the proper

George Dorety made no answer, and to the meal's end no one spoke. After that, Dorety had his meals served

in his stateroom. Captain Cullen scowled at him no longer, though no speech was exchanged between them,

while the Mary Rogers sped north toward warmer latitudes. At the end of the week, Dan Cullen cornered

"I am going to swear out a warrant for your arrest," Dorety answered quietly. "I am going to charge you with

"You're almighty sure of yourself," Captain Cullen sneered, turning on his heel.

A second week passed, and one morning found George Dorety standing in the coachhouse companionway

at the for'ard end of the long poop, taking his first gaze around the deck. The Mary Rogers was reaching

fullandby, in a stiff breeze. Every sail was set and drawing, including the staysails. Captain Cullen strolled

for'ard along the poop. He strolled carelessly, glancing at the passenger out of the corner of his eye. Dorety

was looking the other way, standing with head and shoulders outside the companionway, and only the back of

his head was to be seen. Captain Cullen, with swift eye, embraced the mainstaysailblock and the head and

estimated the distance. He glanced about him. Nobody was looking. Aft, Joshua Higgins, pacing up and

down, had just turned his back and was going the other way. Captain Cullen bent over suddenly and cast the

staysailsheet off from its pin. The heavy block hurtled through the air, smashing Dorety's head like an

eggshell and hurtling on and back and forth as the staysail whipped and slatted in the wind. Joshua Higgins

turned around to see what had carried away, and met the full blast of the vilest portion of Captain Cullen's

"I made the sheet fast myself," whimpered the mate in the first lull, "with an extra turn to make sure. I

"Made fast?" the Captain snarled back, for the benefit of the watch as it struggled to capture the flying sail

before it tore to ribbons. "You couldn't make your grandmother fast, you useless hell's scullion. If you made

that sheet fast with an extra turn, why in hell didn't it stay fast? That's what I want to know. Why in hell didn't

Half an hour later he was as surprised as any when the body of George Dorety was found inside the

companionway on the floor. In the afternoon, alone in his room, he doctored up the log.

"Ordinary seaman, Karl Brun," he wrote, "lost overboard from foreroyalyard in a gale of wind. Was running

at the time, and for the safety of the ship did not dare come up to the wind. Nor could a boat have lived in the

"Had often warned Mr. Dorety about the danger he ran because of his carelessness on deck. I told him, once,

that some day he would get his head knocked off by a block. A carelessly fastened mainstaysail sheet was the

cause of the accident, which was deeply to be regretted because Mr. Dorety was a favourite with all of us."

Captain Dan Cullen read over his literary effort with admiration, blotted the page, and closed the log. He

lighted a cigar and stared before him. He felt the Mary Rogers lift, and heel, and surge along, and knew that

she was making nine knots. A smile of satisfaction slowly dawned on his black and hairy face. Well, anyway,

Doctor Bicknell was in a remarkably gracious mood. Through a minor accident, a slight bit of carelessness,

that was all, a man who might have pulled through had died the preceding night. Though it had been only a

sailorman, one of the innumerable unwashed, the steward of the receiving hospital had been on the anxious

seat all the morning. It was not that the man had died that gave him discomfort, he knew the Doctor too well

for that, but his distress lay in the fact that the operation had been done so well. One of the most delicate in

surgery, it had been as successful as it was clever and audacious. All had then depended upon the treatment,

the nurses, the steward. And the man had died. Nothing much, a bit of carelessness, yet enough to bring the

professional wrath of Doctor Bicknell about his ears and to perturb the working of the staff and nurses for

But, as already stated, the Doctor was in a remarkably gracious mood. When informed by the steward, in fear

and trembling, of the man's unexpected takeoff, his lips did not so much as form one syllable of censure;

nay, they were so pursed that snatches of ragtime floated softly from them, to be broken only by a pleasant

query after the health of the other's eldest born. The steward, deeming it impossible that he could have

"Yes, yes," Doctor Bicknell said impatiently; "I understand. But how about Semper Idem? Is he ready to

"Yes. They're helping him dress now," the steward answered, passing on to the round of his duties, content

It was Semper Idem's recovery which had so fully compensated Doctor Bicknell for the loss of the sailorman.

Lives were to him as nothing, the unpleasant but inevitable incidents of the profession, but cases, ah, cases

were everything. People who knew him were prone to brand him a butcher, but his colleagues were at one in

the belief that a bolder and yet a more capable man never stood over the table. He was not an imaginative

man. He did not possess, and hence had no tolerance for, emotion. His nature was accurate, precise,

scientific. Men were to him no more than pawns, without individuality or personal value. But as cases it was

different. The more broken a man was, the more precarious his grip on life, the greater his significance in the

eyes of Doctor Bicknell. He would as readily forsake a poet laureate suffering from a common accident for a

nameless, mangled vagrant who defied every law of life by refusing to die, as would a child forsake a Punch

So it had been in the case of Semper Idem. The mystery of the man had not appealed to him, nor had his

silence and the veiled romance which the yellow reporters had so sensationally and so fruitlessly exploited in

divers Sunday editions. But Semper Idem's throat had been cut. That was the point. That was where his

interest had centred. Cut from ear to ear, and not one surgeon in a thousand to give a snap of the fingers for

his chance of recovery. But, thanks to the swift municipal ambulance service and to Doctor Bicknell, he had

been dragged back into the world he had sought to leave. The Doctor's coworkers had shaken their heads

when the case was brought in. Impossible, they said. Throat, windpipe, jugular, all but actually severed, and

the loss of blood frightful. As it was such a foregone conclusion, Doctor Bicknell had employed methods and

done things which made them, even in their professional capacities, shudder. And lo! the man had recovered.

So, on this morning that Semper Idem was to leave the hospital, hale and hearty, Doctor Bicknell's geniality

was in nowise disturbed by the steward's report, and he proceeded cheerfully to bring order out of the chaos

of a child's body which had been ground and crunched beneath the wheels of an electric car.

As many will remember, the case of Semper Idem aroused a vast deal of unseemly yet highly natural

curiosity. He had been found in a slum lodging, with throat cut as aforementioned, and blood dripping down

upon the inmates of the room below and disturbing their festivities. He had evidently done the deed standing,

with head bowed forward that he might gaze his last upon a photograph which stood on the table propped

against a candlestick. It was this attitude which had made it possible for Doctor Bicknell to save him. So

terrific had been the sweep of the razor that had he had his head thrown back, as he should have done to have

accomplished the act properly, with his neck stretched and the elastic vascular walls distended, he would

At the hospital, during all the time he travelled the repugnant road back to life, not a word had left his lips.

Nor could anything be learned of him by the sleuths detailed by the chief of police. Nobody knew him, nor

had ever seen or heard of him before. He was strictly, uniquely, of the present. His clothes and surroundings

were those of the lowest labourer, his hands the hands of a gentleman. But not a shred of writing was

discovered, nothing, save in one particular, which would serve to indicate his past or his position in life.

And that one particular was the photograph. If it were at all a likeness, the woman who gazed frankly out

upon the onlooker from the cardmount must have been a striking creature indeed. It was an amateur

production, for the detectives were baffled in that no professional photographer's signature or studio was

appended. Across a corner of the mount, in delicate feminine tracery, was written: "Semper idem; semper

fidelis." And she looked it. As many recollect, it was a face one could never forget. Clever halftones,

remarkably like, were published in all the leading papers at the time; but such procedure gave rise to nothing

but the uncontrollable public curiosity and interminable copy to the spacewriters.

For want of a better name, the rescued suicide was known to the hospital attendants, and to the world, as

Semper Idem. And Semper Idem he remained. Reporters, detectives, and nurses gave him up in despair. Not

one word could he be persuaded to utter; yet the flitting conscious light of his eyes showed that his ears heard

But this mystery and romance played no part in Doctor Bicknell's interest when he paused in the office to

have a parting word with his patient. He, the Doctor, had performed a prodigy in the matter of this man, done

what was virtually unprecedented in the annals of surgery. He did not care who or what the man was, and it

was highly improbable that he should ever see him again; but, like the artist gazing upon a finished creation,

Semper Idem still remained mute. He seemed anxious to be gone. Not a word could the Doctor extract from

him, and little the Doctor cared. He examined the throat of the convalescent carefully, idling over the hideous

scar with the lingering, halfcaressing fondness of a parent. It was not a particularly pleasing sight. An angry

line circled the throatfor all the world as though the man had just escaped the hangman's nooseand,

disappearing below the ear on either side, had the appearance of completing the fiery periphery at the nape of

Maintaining his dogged silence, yielding to the other's examination in much the manner of a leashed lion,

"Well, I'll not keep you," Doctor Bicknell finally said, laying a hand on the man's shoulder and stealing a last

glance at his own handiwork. "But let me give you a bit of advice. Next time you try it on, hold your chin up,

so. Don't snuggle it down and butcher yourself like a cow. Neatness and despatch, you know. Neatness and

Semper Idem's eyes flashed in token that he heard, and a moment later the hospital door swung to on his heel.

It was a busy day for Doctor Bicknell, and the afternoon was well along when he lighted a cigar preparatory

to leaving the table upon which it seemed the sufferers almost clamoured to be laid. But the last one, an old

ragpicker with a broken shoulderblade, had been disposed of, and the first fragrant smoke wreaths had

begun to curl about his head, when the gong of a hurrying ambulance came through the open window from

the street, followed by the inevitable entry of the stretcher with its ghastly freight.

"Lay it on the table," the Doctor directed, turning for a moment to place his cigar in safety. "What is it?"

"Suicidethroat cut," responded one of the stretcher bearers. "Down on Morgan Alley. Little hope, I think,

"Eh? Well, I'll give him a look, anyway." He leaned over the man at the moment when the quick made its last

"Ay," replied Doctor Bicknell, "and gone again. No bungling this time. Properly done, upon my life, sir,

properly done. Took my advice to the letter. I'm not required here. Take it along to the morgue."

Doctor Bicknell secured his cigar and relighted it. "That," he said between the puffs, looking at the steward,

In the morning calm of Korea, when its peace and tranquillity truly merited its ancient name, "Chosen,"

there lived a politician by name Yi Chin Ho. He was a man of parts, andwho shall say?perhaps in no

wise worse than politicians the world over. But, unlike his brethren in other lands, Yi Chin Ho was in jail.

Not that he had inadvertently diverted to himself public moneys, but that he had inadvertently diverted too

much. Excess is to be deplored in all things, even in grafting, and Yi Chin Ho's excess had brought him to

Ten thousand strings of cash he owed the Government, and he lay in prison under sentence of death. There

was one advantage to the situationhe had plenty of time in which to think. And he thought well. Then

"Most worthy man, you see before you one most wretched," he began. "Yet all will be well with me if you

will but let me go free for one short hour this night. And all will be well with you, for I shall see to your

advancement through the years, and you shall come at length to the directorship of all the prisons of

"How now?" demanded the jailer. "What foolishness is this? One short hour, and you but waiting for your

head to be chopped off! And I, with an aged and muchtoberespected mother, not to say anything of a

wife and several children of tender years! Out upon you for the scoundrel that you are!"

"From the Sacred City to the ends of all the Eight Coasts there is no place for me to hide," Yi Chin Ho made

reply. "I am a man of wisdom, but of what worth my wisdom here in prison? Were I free, well I know I could

seek out and obtain the money wherewith to repay the Government. I know of a nose that will save me from

"A nose," said Yi Chin Ho. "A remarkable nose, if I may say so, a most remarkable nose."

The jailer threw up his hands despairingly. "Ah, what a wag you are, what a wag," he laughed. "To think that

And so saying, he turned and went away. But in the end, being a man soft of head and heart, when the night

Straight he went to the Governor, catching him alone and arousing him from his sleep.

"Yi Chin Ho, or I'm no Governor!" cried the Governor. "What do you here who should be in prison waiting

"I pray Your Excellency to listen to me," said Yi Chin Ho, squatting on his hams by the bedside and lighting

his pipe from the firebox. "A dead man is without value. It is true, I am as a dead man, without value to the

Government, to Your Excellency, or to myself. But if, so to say, Your Excellency were to give me my

"Your Excellency well knows that if I can repay the ten thousand strings of cash, the Government will pardon

me," Yi Chin Ho went on. "So, as I say, if Your Excellency were to give me my freedom for a few days,

being a man of understanding, I should then repay the Government and be in position to be of service to Your

Excellency. I should be in position to be of very great service to Your Excellency."

"Then come with it to me tomorrow night; I would now sleep," said the Governor, taking up his snore where

On the following night, having again obtained leave of absence from the jailer, Yi Chin Ho presented himself

The Governor sat up and opened his eyes. Yi Chin Ho proffered in his hand a sheet of paper. The Governor

"Withal it is an exceeding corpulent nose, thus, and so, all in one place, at the end," proceeded Yi Chin Ho.

"Your Excellency would seek far and wide and many a day for that nose and find it not!"

"A most unusual nose," said the Governor. "Never have I seen the like. But what do you with this nose, Yi

"I seek it whereby to repay the money to the Government," said Yi Chin Ho. "I seek it to be of service to

Your Excellency, and I seek it to save my own worthless head. Further, I seek Your Excellency's seal upon

And the Governor laughed and affixed the seal of State, and Yi Chin Ho departed. For a month and a day he

travelled the King's Road which leads to the shore of the Eastern Sea; and there, one night, at the gate of the

"None other than the master of the house will I see," said he fiercely to the frightened servants. "I travel upon

Straightway was he led to an inner room, where the master of the house was roused from his sleep and

"You are Pak Chung Chang, head man of this city," said Yi Chin Ho in tones that were allaccusing. "I am

Pak Chung Chang trembled. Well he knew the King's business was ever a terrible business. His knees smote

"The King's business never waits!" thundered Yi Chin Ho. "Come apart with me, and swiftly. I have an affair

"It is the King's affair," he added with even greater fierceness; so that Pak Chung Chang's silver pipe dropped

"Know then," said Yi Chin Ho, when they had gone apart, "that the King is troubled with an affliction, a very

terrible affliction. In that he failed to cure, the Court physician has had nothing else than his head chopped

off. From all the Eight Provinces have the physicians come to wait upon the King. Wise consultation have

they held, and they have decided that for a remedy for the King's affliction nothing else is required than a

"Then by none other was I summoned than His Excellency the Prime Minister himself. He put a paper into

my hand. Upon this paper was the very peculiar kind of nose drawn by the physicians of the Eight Provinces,

"'Go,' said His Excellency the Prime Minister. 'Seek out this nose, for the King's affliction is sore. And

wheresoever you find this nose upon the face of a man, strike it off forthright and bring it in all haste to the

Court, for the King must be cured. Go, and come not back until your search is rewarded.'

"And so I departed upon my quest," said Yi Chin Ho. "I have sought out the remotest corners of the kingdom;

I have travelled the Eight Highways, searched the Eight Provinces, and sailed the seas of the Eight Coasts.

With a great flourish he drew a paper from his girdle, unrolled it with many snappings and cracklings, and

thrust it before the face of Pak Chung Chang. Upon the paper was the picture of the nose.

"Why dissemble?" demanded Yi Chin Ho. "You know it is your father's nose. Bring him before me that I

"Mercy!" cried Pak Chung Chang, falling on his knees. "It is impossible! It is impossible! You cannot strike

off my father's nose. He cannot go down without his nose to the grave. He will become a laughter and a

byword, and all my days and nights will be filled with woe. O reflect! Report that you have seen no such nose

"My heart softens strangely at your tears," said Yi Chin Ho. "I, too, know filial piety and regard. But" He

hesitated, then added, as though thinking aloud, "It is as much as my head is worth."

"A not remarkable head," said Yi Chin Ho. "An absurdly unremarkable head; but, such is my great

foolishness, I value it at nothing less than one hundred thousand strings of cash."

"I shall need horses to carry the treasure," said Yi Chin Ho, "and men to guard it well as I journey through the

"There are robbers abroad in the land," said Pak Chung Chang, sadly. "But it shall be as you wish, so long as

my ancient and verymuchtobe respected ancestor's nose abide in its appointed place."

"Say nothing to any man of this occurrence," said Yi Chin Ho, "else will other and more loyal servants than I

And so Yi Chin Ho departed on his way through the mountains, blithe of heart and gay of song as he listened

There is little more to tell. Yi Chin Ho prospered through the years. By his efforts the jailer attained at length

to the directorship of all the prisons of Chosen; the Governor ultimately betook himself to the Sacred City to

be Prime Minister to the King, while Yi Chin Ho became the King's boon companion and sat at table with

him to the end of a round, fat life. But Pak Chung Chang fell into a melancholy, and ever after he shook his

head sadly, with tears in his eyes, whenever he regarded the expensive nose of his ancient and

The Francis Spaight was running before it solely under a mizzentopsail, when the thing happened. It was not

due to carelessness so much as to the lack of discipline of the crew and to the fact that they were indifferent

seamen at best. The man at the wheel in particular, a Limerick man, had had no experience with salt water

beyond that of rafting timber on the Shannon between the Quebec vessels and the shore. He was afraid of the

huge seas that rose out of the murk astern and bore down upon him, and he was more given to cowering away

from their threatened impact than he was to meeting their blows with the wheel and checking the ship's rush

It was three in the morning when his unseamanlike conduct precipitated the catastrophe. At sight of a sea far

larger than its fellows, he crouched down, releasing his hands from the spokes. The Francis Spaight sheered

as her stern lifted on the sea, receiving the full fling of the cap on her quarter. The next instant she was in the

trough, her leerail buried till the ocean was level with her hatchcoamings, sea after sea breaking over her

The men were out of hand, helpless and hopeless, stupid in their bewilderment and fear, and resolute only in

that they would not obey orders. Some wailed, others clung silently in the weather shrouds, and still others

muttered prayers or shrieked vile imprecations; and neither captain nor mate could get them to bear a hand at

the pumps or at setting patches of sails to bring the vessel up to the wind and sea. Inside the hour the ship was

over on her beam ends, the lubberly cowards climbing up her side and hanging on in the rigging. When she

went over, the mate was caught and drowned in the aftercabin, as were two sailors who had sought refuge in

The mate had been the ablest man on board, and the captain was now scarcely less helpless than his men.

Beyond cursing them for their worthlessness, he did nothing; and it remained for a man named Mahoney, a

Belfast man, and a boy, O'Brien, of Limerick, to cut away the fore and main masts. This they did at great risk

on the perpendicular wall of the wreck, sending the mizzentopmast overside along in the general crash. The

Francis Spaight righted, and it was well that she was lumber laden, else she would have sunk, for she was

already waterlogged. The mainmast, still fast by the shrouds, beat like a thunderous sledgehammer against

Day dawned on the savage ocean, and in the cold gray light all that could be seen of the Francis Spaight

emerging from the sea were the poop, the shattered mizzenmast, and a ragged line of bulwarks. It was

midwinter in the North Atlantic, and the wretched men were halfdead from cold. But there was no place

where they could find rest. Every sea breached clean over the wreck, washing away the salt incrustations

from their bodies and depositing fresh incrustations. The cabin under the poop was awash to the knees, but

here at least was shelter from the chill wind, and here the survivors congregated, standing upright, holding on

In vain Mahoney strove to get the men to take turns in watching aloft from the mizzenmast for any chance

vessel. The icy gale was too much for them, and they preferred the shelter of the cabin. O'Brien, the boy, who

was only fifteen, took turns with Mahoney on the freezing perch. It was the boy, at three in the afternoon,

who called down that he had sighted a sail. This did bring them from the cabin, and they crowded the poop

rail and weather mizzen shrouds as they watched the strange ship. But its course did not lie near, and when it

disappeared below the skyline, they returned shivering to the cabin, not one offering to relieve the watch at

By the end of the second day, Mahoney and O'Brien gave up their attempt, and thereafter the vessel drifted in

the gale uncared for and without a lookout. There were thirteen alive, and for seventytwo hours they stood

kneedeep in the sloshing water on the cabin floor, halffrozen, without food, and with but three bottles of

wine shared among them. All food and fresh water were below, and there was no getting at such supplies in

the waterlogged condition of the wreck. As the days went by, no food whatever passed their lips. Fresh

water, in small quantities, they were able to obtain by holding a cover of a tureen under the saddle of the

mizzenmast. But the rain fell infrequently, and they were hard put. When it rained, they also soaked their

handkerchiefs, squeezing them out into their mouths or into their shoes. As the wind and sea went down, they

were even able to mop the exposed portions of the deck that were free from brine and so add to their water

supply. But food they had none, and no way of getting it, though seabirds flew repeatedly overhead.

In the calm weather that followed the gale, after having remained on their feet for ninetysix hours, they were

able to find dry planks in the cabin on which to lie. But the long hours of standing in the salt water had

caused sores to form on their legs. These sores were extremely painful. The slightest contact or scrape caused

severe anguish, and in their weak condition and crowded situation they were continually hurting one another

in this manner. Not a man could move about without being followed by volleys of abuse, curses, and groans.

So great was their misery that the strong oppressed the weak, shoving them aside from the dry planks to shift

for themselves in the cold and wet. The boy, O'Brien, was specially maltreated. Though there were three

other boys, it was O'Brien who came in for most of the abuse. There was no explaining it, except on the

ground that his was a stronger and more dominant spirit than those of the other boys, and that he stood up

more for his rights, resenting the petty injustices that were meted out to all the boys by the men. Whenever

O'Brien came near the men in search of a dry place to sleep, or merely moved about, he was kicked and

cuffed away. In return, he cursed them for their selfish brutishness, and blows and kicks and curses were

rained upon him. Miserable as were all of them, he was thus made far more miserable; and it was only the

As the days went by and they grew weaker, their peevishness and illtemper increased, which, in turn,

increased the illtreatment and sufferings of O'Brien. By the sixteenth day all hands were far gone with

hunger, and they stood together in small groups, talking in undertones and occasionally glancing at O'Brien.

It was at high noon that the conference came to a head. The captain was the spokesman. All were collected on

"Men," the captain began, "we have been a long time without foodtwo weeks and two days it is, though it

seems more like two years and two months. We can't hang out much longer. It is beyond human nature to go

on hanging out with nothing in our stomachs. There is a serious question to consider: whether it is better for

all to die, or for one to die. We are standing with our feet in our graves. If one of us dies, the rest may live

Michael Behane, the man who had been at the wheel when the Francis Spaight broached to, called out that it

"Let it be one of the b'ys!" cried Sullivan, a Tarbert man, glancing at the same time significantly at O'Brien.

"It is my opinion," the captain went on, "that it will be a good deed for one of us to die for the rest."

"And it is my opinion that 'tis best for one of the boys to die. They have no families to support, nor would

they be considered so great a loss to their friends as those who have wives and children."

"'Tis right." "Very right." "Very fit it should be done," the men muttered one to another.

"Our lives is just as dear to us as the rest iv yez," O'Brien protested. "An' our famblies, too. As for wives an'

childer, who is there savin' meself to care for me old mother that's a widow, as you know well, Michael

Behane, that comes from Limerick? 'Tis not fair. Let the lots be drawn between all of us, men and b'ys."

Mahoney was the only man who spoke in favour of the boys, declaring that it was the fair thing for all to

share alike. Sullivan and the captain insisted on the drawing of lots being confined to the boys. There were

"'Twould be a good deed to put you out of the way. You deserve it. 'Twould be the right way to serve you, an'

He started toward O'Brien, with intent to lay hands on him and proceed at once with the killing, while several

others likewise shuffled toward him and reached for him. He stumbled backwards to escape them, at the same

The captain prepared four sticks of different lengths and handed them to Sullivan.

"You're thinkin' the drawin'll not be fair," the latter sneered to O'Brien. "So it's yerself'll do the drawin'."

To this O'Brien agreed. A handkerchief was tied over his eyes, blindfolding him, and he knelt down on the

Sullivan held up one of the sticks. The rest were concealed in his hand so that no one could see whether it

Sullivan laid the stick aside. Those who looked could not tell if it were the fatal one. Sullivan held up another

With a quick movement, Sullivan threw the four sticks together. No one had seen.

O'Brien was very quiet. He arose to his feet, took the bandage off, and looked around.

"How do you know the stick was mine?" O'Brien questioned. "Did you see ut, Johnny Sheehan?"

"'Twas a fair drawin'," Sullivan said. "Ye had yer chanct an' ye lost, that's all iv ut."

"A fair drawin'," the captain added. "Didn't I behold it myself? The stick was yours, O'Brien, an' ye may as

well get ready. Where's the cook? Gorman, come here. Fetch the tureen cover, some of ye. Gorman, do your

"But how'll I do it," the cook demanded. He was a weakeyed, weakchinned, indecisive man.

"Then 'tis yer share for better men than yerself," Sullivan sneered. "Go on with yer duty, cook."

"If yez don't make mate for us, we'll be makin' mate of yerself," Behane threatened. "Somebody must die, an'

Johnny Sheehan began to cry. O'Brien listened anxiously. His face was pale. His lips trembled, and at times

"I signed on as cook," Gorman enounced. "An' cook I wud if galley there was. But I'll not lay me hand to

"An' cook ye'll be for wan minute more only," Sullivan said grimly, at the same moment gripping the cook's

head from behind and bending it back till the windpipe and jugular were stretched taut. "Where's yer knife,

"It's all right, Gorman," he said. "Go on with ut. 'Tis meself knows yer not wantin' to do ut. It's all right,

sir"this to the captain, who had laid a hand heavily on his arm. "Ye won't have to hold me, sir. I'll stand

"Stop yer blitherin', an' go an' get the tureen cover," Behane commanded Johnny Sheehan, at the same time

The boy, who was scarcely more than a child, fetched the cover. He crawled and tottered along the deck, so

weak was he from hunger. The tears still ran down his cheeks. Behane took the cover from him, at the same

O'Brien took off his coat and bared his right arm. His under lip still trembled, but he held a tight grip on

"Mahoney, tell me mother what happened to me, if ever ye get back," O'Brien requested.

"'Tis black murder, black an' damned," he said. "The b'y's flesh'll do none iv yez anny good. Mark me words.

"Get ready," the captain ordered. "You, Sullivan, hold the coverthat's itclose up. Spill nothing. It's

Gorman made an effort. The knife was dull. He was weak. Besides, his hand was shaking so violently that he

nearly dropped the knife. The three boys were crouched apart, in a huddle, crying and sobbing. With the

exception of Mahoney, the men were gathered about the victim, craning their necks to see.

The wretched cook was seized with a spasm of resolution, sawing back and forth with the blade on O'Brien's

wrist. The veins were severed. Sullivan held the tureen cover close underneath. The cut veins gaped wide, but

no ruddy flood gushed forth. There was no blood at all. The veins were dry and empty. No one spoke. The

grim and silent figures swayed in unison with each heave of the ship. Every eye was turned fixedly upon that

"'Tis a warnin'," Mahoney cried. "Lave the b'y alone. Mark me words. His death'll do none iv yez anny good."

"Try at the elbowthe left elbow, 'tis nearer the heart," the captain said finally, in a dim and husky voice that

"Give me the knife," O'Brien said roughly, taking it out of the cook's hand. "I can't be lookin' at ye puttin' me

Quite coolly he cut the vein at the left elbow, but, like the cook, he failed to bring blood.

"This is all iv no use," Sullivan said. "'Tis better to put him out iv his misery by bleedin' him at the throat."

"Don't be doin' ut," he cried. "There'll be no blood in me throat. Give me a little time. 'Tis cold an' weak I am.

Be lettin' me lay down an' slape a bit. Then I'll be warm an' the blood'll flow."

"'Tis no use," Sullivan objected. "As if ye cud be slapin' at a time like this. Ye'll not slape, and ye'll not warm

"I was sick at Limerick wan night," O'Brien hurried on, "an' the dochtor cudn't bleed me. But after slapin' a

few hours an' gettin' warm in bed the blood came freely. It's God's truth I'm tellin' yez. Don't be murderin'

"His veins are open now," the captain said. "'Tis no use leavin' him in his pain. Do it now an' be done with it."

"I'll be the death iv yez!" he screamed. "Take yer hands off iv me, Sullivan! I'll come back! I'll haunt yez!

"'Tis disgraceful!" yelled Behane. "If the short stick'd ben mine, I'd a let me mates cut the head off iv me an'

Sullivan leaped in and caught the unhappy lad by the hair. The rest of the men followed, O'Brien kicked and

struggled, snarling and snapping at the hands that clutched him from every side. Little Johnny Sheehan broke

out into wild screaming, but the men took no notice of him. O'Brien was bent backward to the deck, the

tureen cover under his neck. Gorman was shoved forward. Some one had thrust a large sheathknife into his

From every side a torrent of abuse and threats poured in upon the cook. Still he hung back.

"Maybe there'll be more blood in his veins than O'Brien's," Sullivan suggested significantly.

Behane caught Gorman by the hair and twisted his head back, while Sullivan attempted to take possession of

"Lave go, an' I'll do ut!" he screamed frantically. "Don't be cuttin' me throat! I'll do the deed! I'll do the deed!"

Gorman allowed himself to be shoved forward. He looked at the boy, closed his eyes, and muttered a prayer.

Then, without opening his eyes, he did the deed that had been appointed him. O'Brien emitted a shriek that

sank swiftly to a gurgling sob. The men held him till his struggles ceased, when he was laid upon the deck.

They were eager and impatient, and with oaths and threats they urged Gorman to hurry with the preparation

"Lave ut, you bloody butchers," Mahoney said quietly. "Lave ut, I tell yez. Ye'll not be needin' anny iv ut

now. 'Tis as I said: ye'll not be profitin' by the lad's blood. Empty ut overside, Behane. Empty ut overside."

Behane, still holding the tureen cover in both his hands, glanced to windward. He walked to the rail and

threw the cover and contents into the sea. A fullrigged ship was bearing down upon them a short mile away.

So occupied had they been with the deed just committed, that none had had eyes for a lookout. All hands

watched her coming onthe brightly coppered forefoot parting the water like a golden knife, the headsails

flapping lazily and emptily at each downward surge, and the towering canvas tiers dipping and curtsying with

As she hove to, a cable length away, the captain of the Francis Spaight bestirred himself and ordered a

tarpaulin to be thrown over O'Brien's corpse. A boat was lowered from the stranger's side and began to pull

toward them. John Gorman laughed. He laughed softly at first, but he accompanied each stroke of the oars

with spasmodically increasing glee. It was this maniacal laughter that greeted the rescue boat as it hauled

[The capitalist, or industrial oligarch, Roger Vanderwater, mentioned in the narrative, has been identified as

the ninth in the line of the Vanderwaters that controlled for hundreds of years the cotton factories of the

South. This Roger Vanderwater flourished in the last decades of the twentysixth century after Christ, which

was the fifth century of the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the ruins of the early Republic.

From internal evidences we are convinced that the narrative which follows was not reduced to writing till the

twentyninth century. Not only was it unlawful to write or print such matter during that period, but the

working class was so illiterate that only in rare instances were its members able to read and write. This was

the dark reign of the overman, in whose speech the great mass of the people were characterized as the "herd

animals." All literacy was frowned upon and stamped out. From the statutebooks of the times may be

instanced that black law that made it a capital offence for any man, no matter of what class, to teach even the

alphabet to a member of the workingclass. Such stringent limitation of education to the ruling class was

One result of the foregoing was the development of the professional story tellers. These storytellers were

paid by the oligarchy, and the tales they told were legendary, mythical, romantic, and harmless. But the spirit

of freedom never quite died out, and agitators, under the guise of story tellers, preached revolt to the slave

class. That the following tale was banned by the oligarchs we have proof from the records of the criminal

police court of Ashbury, wherein, on January 27, 2734, one John Tourney, found guilty of telling the tale in a

boozingken of labourers, was sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona

Listen, my brothers, and I will tell you a tale of an arm. It was the arm of Tom Dixon, and Tom Dixon was a

weaver of the first class in a factory of that hellhound and master, Roger Vanderwater. This factory was

called "Hell's Bottom" . . . by the slaves who toiled in it, and I guess they ought to know; and it was situated

in Kingsbury, at the other end of the town from Vanderwater's summer palace. You do not know where

Kingsbury is? There are many things, my brothers, that you do not know, and it is sad. It is because you do

not know that you are slaves. When I have told you this tale, I should like to form a class among you for the

learning of written and printed speech. Our masters read and write and possess many books, and it is because

of that that they are our masters, and live in palaces, and do not work. When the toilers learn to read and

writeall of themthey will grow strong; then they will use their strength to break their bonds, and there

Kingsbury, my brothers, is in the old State of Alabama. For three hundred years the Vanderwaters have

owned Kingsbury and its slave pens and factories, and slave pens and factories in many other places and

States. You have heard of the Vanderwaterswho has not?but let me tell you things you do not know

about them. The first Vanderwater was a slave, even as you and I. Have you got that? He was a slave, and

that was over three hundred years ago. His father was a machinist in the slave pen of Alexander Burrell, and

his mother was a washerwoman in the same slave pen. There is no doubt about this. I am telling you truth. It

is history. It is printed, every word of it, in the history books of our masters, which you cannot read because

your masters will not permit you to learn to read. You can understand why they will not permit you to learn

to read, when there are such things in the books. They know, and they are very wise. If you did read such

things, you might be wanting in respect to your masters, which would be a dangerous thing . . . to your

masters. But I know, for I can read, and I am telling you what I have read with my own eyes in the history

The first Vanderwater's name was not Vanderwater; it was VangeBill Vange, the son of Yergis Vange, the

machinist, and Laura Carnly, the washerwoman. Young Bill Vange was strong. He might have remained with

the slaves and led them to freedom; instead, however, he served the masters and was well rewarded. He

began his service, when yet a small child, as a spy in his home slave pen. He is known to have informed on

his own father for seditious utterance. This is fact. I have read it with my own eyes in the records. He was too

good a slave for the slave pen. Alexander Burrell took him out, while yet a child, and he was taught to read

and write. He was taught many things, and he was entered in the secret service of the Government. Of course,

he no longer wore the slave dress, except for disguise at such times when he sought to penetrate the secrets

and plots of the slaves. It was he, when but eighteen years of age, who brought that great hero and comrade,

Ralph Jacobus, to trial and execution in the electric chair. Of course, you have all heard the sacred name of

Ralph Jacobus, but it is news to you that he was brought to his death by the first Vanderwater, whose name

was Vange. I know. I have read it in the books. There are many interesting things like that in the books.

And after Ralph Jacobus died his shameful death, Bill Vange's name began the many changes it was to

undergo. He was known as "Sly Vange" far and wide. He rose high in the secret service, and he was rewarded

in grand ways, but still he was not a member of the master class. The men were willing that he should

become so; it was the women of the master class who refused to have Sly Vange one of them. Sly Vange

gave good service to the masters. He had been a slave himself, and he knew the ways of the slaves. There was

no fooling him. In those days the slaves were braver than now, and they were always trying for their freedom.

And Sly Vange was everywhere, in all their schemes and plans, bringing their schemes and plans to naught

and their leaders to the electric chair. It was in 2255 that his name was next changed for him. It was in that

year that the Great Mutiny took place. In that region west of the Rocky Mountains, seventeen millions of

slaves strove bravely to overthrow their masters. Who knows, if Sly Vange had not lived, but that they would

have succeeded? But Sly Vange was very much alive. The masters gave him supreme command of the

situation. In eight months of fighting, one million and three hundred and fifty thousand slaves were killed.

Vange, Bill Vange, Sly Vange, killed them, and he broke the Great Mutiny. And he was greatly rewarded,

and so red were his hands with the blood of the slaves that thereafter he was called "Bloody Vange." You see,

my brothers, what interesting things are to be found in the books when one can read them. And, take my word

for it, there are many other things, even more interesting, in the books. And if you will but study with me, in

a year's time you can read those books for yourselvesay, in six months some of you will be able to read

Bloody Vange lived to a ripe old age, and always, to the last, was he received in the councils of the masters;

but never was he made a master himself. He had first opened his eyes, you see, in a slave pen. But oh, he was

well rewarded! He had a dozen palaces in which to live. He, who was no master, owned thousands of slaves.

He had a great pleasure yacht upon the sea that was a floating palace, and he owned a whole island in the sea

where toiled ten thousand slaves on his coffee plantations. But in his old age he was lonely, for he lived apart,

hated by his brothers, the slaves, and looked down upon by those he had served and who refused to be his

brothers. The masters looked down upon him because he had been born a slave. Enormously wealthy he died;

but he died horribly, tormented by his conscience, regretting all he had done and the red stain on his name.

But with his children it was different. They had not been born in the slave pen, and by the special ruling of

the Chief Oligarch of that time, John Morrison, they were elevated to the master class. And it was then that

the name of Vange disappears from the page of history. It becomes Vanderwater, and Jason Vange, the son of

Bloody Vange, becomes Jason Vanderwater, the founder of the Vanderwater line. But that was three hundred

years ago, and the Vanderwaters of today forget their beginnings and imagine that somehow the clay of

their bodies is different stuff from the clay in your body and mine and in the bodies of all slaves. And I ask

you, Why should a slave become the master of another slave? And why should the son of a slave become the

master of many slaves? I leave these questions for you to answer for yourselves, but do not forget that in the

And now, my brothers, I come back to the beginning of my tale to tell you of Tom Dixon's arm. Roger

Vanderwater's factory in Kingsbury was rightly named "Hell's Bottom," but the men who toiled in it were

men, as you shall see. Women toiled there, too, and children, little children. All that toiled there had the

regular slave rights under the law, but only under the law, for they were deprived of many of their rights by

It is a long story, but I shall not tell all of it to you. I shall tell only about the arm. It happened that, according

to the law, a portion of the starvation wage of the slaves was held back each month and put into a fund. This

fund was for the purpose of helping such unfortunate fellow workmen as happened to be injured by

accidents or to be overtaken by sickness. As you know with yourselves, these funds are controlled by the

overseers. It is the law, and so it was that the fund at Hell's Bottom was controlled by the two overseers of

Now, Clancy and Munster took this fund for their own use. When accidents happened to the workmen, their

fellows, as was the custom, made grants from the fund; but the overseers refused to pay over the grants. What

could the slaves do? They had their rights under the law, but they had no access to the law. Those that

complained to the overseers were punished. You know yourselves what form such punishment takesthe

fines for faulty work that is not faulty; the overcharging of accounts in the Company's store; the vile

treatment of one's women and children; and the allotment to bad machines whereon, work as one will, he

Once, the slaves of Hell's Bottom protested to Vanderwater. It was the time of the year when he spent several

months in Kingsbury. One of the slaves could write; it chanced that his mother could write, and she had

secretly taught him as her mother had secretly taught her. So this slave wrote a round robin, wherein was

contained their grievances, and all the slaves signed by mark. And, with proper stamps upon the envelope, the

round robin was mailed to Roger Vanderwater. And Roger Vanderwater did nothing, save to turn the round

robin over to the two overseers. Clancy and Munster were angered. They turned the guards loose at night on

the slave pen. The guards were armed with pick handles. It is said that next day only half of the slaves were

able to work in Hell's Bottom. They were well beaten. The slave who could write was so badly beaten that he

lived only three months. But before he died, he wrote once more, to what purpose you shall hear.

Four or five weeks afterward, Tom Dixon, a slave, had his arm torn off by a belt in Hell's Bottom. His

fellowworkmen, as usual, made a grant to him from the fund, and Clancy and Munster, as usual, refused to

pay it over from the fund. The slave who could write, and who even then was dying, wrote anew a recital of

their grievances. And this document was thrust into the hand of the arm that had been torn from Tom Dixon's

Now it chanced that Roger Vanderwater was lying ill in his palace at the other end of Kingsburynot the

dire illness that strikes down you and me, brothers; just a bit of biliousness, mayhap, or no more than a bad

headache because he had eaten too heartily or drunk too deeply. But it was enough for him, being tender and

soft from careful rearing. Such men, packed in cotton wool all their lives, are exceeding tender and soft.

Believe me, brothers, Roger Vanderwater felt as badly with his aching head, or THOUGHT he felt as badly,

It happened that Roger Vanderwater was fond of scientific farming, and that on his farm, three miles outside

of Kingsbury, he had managed to grow a new kind of strawberry. He was very proud of that new strawberry

of his, and he would have been out to see and pick the first ripe ones, had it not been for his illness. Because

of his illness he had ordered the old farm slave to bring in personally the first box of the berries. All this was

learned from the gossip of a palace scullion, who slept each night in the slave pen. The overseer of the

plantation should have brought in the berries, but he was on his back with a broken leg from trying to break a

colt. The scullion brought the word in the night, and it was known that next day the berries would come in.

And the men in the slave pen of Hell's Bottom, being men and not cowards, held a council.

The slave who could write, and who was sick and dying from the pickhandle beating, said he would carry

Tom Dixon's arm; also, he said he must die anyway, and that it mattered nothing if he died a little sooner. So

five slaves stole from the slave pen that night after the guards had made their last rounds. One of the slaves

was the man who could write. They lay in the brush by the roadside until late in the morning, when the old

farm slave came driving to town with the precious fruit for the master. What of the farm slave being old and

rheumatic, and of the slave who could write being stiff and injured from his beating, they moved their bodies

about when they walked, very much in the same fashion. The slave who could write put on the other's

clothes, pulled the broadbrimmed hat over his eyes, climbed upon the seat of the wagon, and drove on to

town. The old farm slave was kept tied all day in the bushes until evening, when the others loosed him and

In the meantime, Roger Vanderwater lay waiting for the berries in his wonderful bedroomsuch wonders

and such comforts were there that they would have blinded the eyes of you and me who have never seen such

things. The slave who could write said afterward that it was like a glimpse of Paradise! And why not? The

labour and the lives of ten thousand slaves had gone to the making of that bedchamber, while they themselves

slept in vile lairs like wild beasts. The slave who could write brought in the berries on a silver tray or

platteryou see, Roger Vanderwater wanted to speak with him in person about the berries.

The slave who could write tottered his dying body across the wonderful room and knelt by the couch of

Vanderwater, holding out before him the tray. Large green leaves covered the top of the tray, and these the

bodyservant alongside whisked away so that Vanderwater could see. And Roger Vanderwater, propped

upon his elbow, saw. He saw the fresh, wonderful fruit lying there like precious jewels, and in the midst of it

the arm of Tom Dixon as it had been torn from his body, well washed, of course, my brothers, and very white

against the bloodred fruit. And also he saw, clutched in the stiff, dead fingers, the petition of his slaves who

"Take and read," said the slave who could write. And even as the master took the petition, the bodyservant,

who till then had been motionless with surprise, struck with his fist the kneeling slave upon the mouth. The

slave was dying anyway, and was very weak, and did not mind. He made no sound, and, having fallen over

on his side, he lay there quietly, bleeding from the blow on the mouth. The physician, who had run for the

palace guards, came back with them, and the slave was dragged upright upon his feet. But as they dragged

him up, his hand clutched Tom Dixon's arm from where it had fallen on the floor.

"He shall be flung alive to the hounds!" the bodyservant was crying in great wrath. "He shall be flung alive

But Roger Vanderwater, forgetting his headache, still leaning on his elbow, commanded silence, and went on

reading the petition. And while he read, there was silence, all standing upright, the wrathful bodyservant,

the physician, the palace guards, and in their midst the slave, bleeding at the mouth and still holding Tom

Dixon's arm. And when Roger Vanderwater had done, he turned upon the slave, saying

"If in this paper there be one lie, you shall be sorry that you were ever born."

"You have done your worst to me. I am dying now. In a week I shall be dead, so it does not matter if you kill

"What do you with that?" the master asked, pointing to the arm; and the slave made answer

"I take it back to the pen to give it burial. Tom Dixon was my friend. We worked beside each other at our

There is little more to my tale, brothers. The slave and the arm were sent back in a cart to the pen. Nor were

any of the slaves punished for what they had done. Indeed, Roger Vanderwater made investigation and

punished the two overseers, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster. Their freeholds were taken from them. They

were branded, each upon the forehead, their right hands were cut off, and they were turned loose upon the

highway to wander and beg until they died. And the fund was managed rightfully thereafter for a timefor a

time only, my brothers; for after Roger Vanderwater came his son, Albert, who was a cruel master and half

Brothers, that slave who carried the arm into the presence of the master was my father. He was a brave man.

And even as his mother secretly taught him to read, so did he teach me. Because he died shortly after from

the pickhandle beating, Roger Vanderwater took me out of the slave pen and tried to make various better

things out of me. I might have become an overseer in Hell's Bottom, but I chose to become a storyteller,

wandering over the land and getting close to my brothers, the slaves, everywhere. And I tell you stories like

this, secretly, knowing that you will not betray me; for if you did, you know as well as I that my tongue will

be torn out and that I shall tell stories no more. And my message is, brothers, that there is a good time

coming, when all will be well in the world and there will be neither masters nor slaves. But first you must

prepare for that good time by learning to read. There is power in the printed word. And here am I to teach you

to read, and as well there are others to see that you get the books when I am gone along upon my waythe

history books wherein you will learn about your masters, and learn to become strong even as they.

[EDITOR'S NOTE.From "Historical Fragments and Sketches," first published in fifty volumes in 4427,

and now, after two hundred years, because of its accuracy and value, edited and republished by the National

With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed

the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the

feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two children in the other room had been

sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they had gone supperless. His wife had touched

nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes. She was a thin, worn woman of the

workingclass, though signs of an earlier prettiness were not wanting in her face. The flour for the gravy she

had borrowed from the neighbour across the hall The last two ha'pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his weight, and quite mechanically he put

his pipe in his mouth and dipped into the side pocket of his coat. The absence of any tobacco made him aware

of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the pipe away. His movements were slow, almost

hulking, as though he were burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solidbodied,

stolidlooking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being overprepossessing. His rough clothes were

old and slouchy. The uppers of his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy resoling that was itself of no

recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two shilling affair, showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint

But it was Tom King's face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was. It was the face of a typical

prizefighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed

and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no

feature of it might escape notice, it was cleanshaven. The lips were shapeless and constituted a mouth harsh

to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of

movement and heavylidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal

that he was, the eyes were the most animallike feature about him. They were sleepy, lionlikethe eyes of

a fighting animal. The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of

a villainous looking head. A nose twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a

cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the

beard, freshshaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blueblack stain.

Altogether, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a dark alley or lonely place. And yet Tom King was not

a criminal, nor had he ever done anything criminal. Outside of brawls, common to his walk in life, he had

harmed no one. Nor had he ever been known to pick a quarrel. He was a professional, and all the fighting

brutishness of him was reserved for his professional appearances. Outside the ring he was slowgoing, easy

natured, and, in his younger days, when money was flush, too openhanded for his own good. He bore no

grudges and had few enemies. Fighting was a business with him. In the ring he struck to hurt, struck to maim,

struck to destroy; but there was no animus in it. It was a plain business proposition. Audiences assembled and

paid for the spectacle of men knocking each other out. The winner took the big end of the purse. When Tom

King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years before, he knew that the Gouger's jaw was only four

months healed after having been broken in a Newcastle bout. And he had played for that jaw and broken it

again in the ninth round, not because he bore the Gouger any illwill, but because that was the surest way to

put the Gouger out and win the big end of the purse. Nor had the Gouger borne him any illwill for it. It was

Tom King had never been a talker, and he sat by the window, morosely silent, staring at his hands. The veins

stood out on the backs of the hands, large and swollen; and the knuckles, smashed and battered and

malformed, testified to the use to which they had been put. He had never heard that a man's life was the life

of his arteries, but well he knew the meaning of those big upstanding veins. His heart had pumped too much

blood through them at top pressure. They no longer did the work. He had stretched the elasticity out of them,

and with their distension had passed his endurance. He tired easily now. No longer could he do a fast twenty

rounds, hammer and tongs, fight, fight, fight, from gong to gong, with fierce rally on top of fierce rally,

beaten to the ropes and in turn beating his opponent to the ropes, and rallying fiercest and fastest of all in that

last, twentieth round, with the house on its feet and yelling, himself rushing, striking, ducking, raining

showers of blows upon showers of blows and receiving showers of blows in return, and all the time the heart

faithfully pumping the surging blood through the adequate veins. The veins, swollen at the time, had always

shrunk down again, though each time, imperceptibly at first, not quiteremaining just a trifle larger than

before. He stared at them and at his battered knuckles, and, for the moment, caught a vision of the youthful

excellence of those hands before the first knuckle had been smashed on the head of Benny Jones, otherwise

"Blimey, but couldn't I go a piece of steak!" he muttered aloud, clenching his huge fists and spitting out a

"As how 'e was thinkin' Sandel ud do ye tonight, an' as how yer score was comfortable big as it was."

Tom King grunted, but did not reply. He was busy thinking of the bull terrier he had kept in his younger days

to which he had fed steaks without end. Burke would have given him credit for a thousand steaksthen. But

times had changed. Tom King was getting old; and old men, fighting before secondrate clubs, couldn't

He had got up in the morning with a longing for a piece of steak, and the longing had not abated. He had not

had a fair training for this fight. It was a drought year in Australia, times were hard, and even the most

irregular work was difficult to find. He had had no sparring partner, and his food had not been of the best nor

always sufficient. He had done a few days' navvy work when he could get it, and he had run around the

Domain in the early mornings to get his legs in shape. But it was hard, training without a partner and with a

wife and two kiddies that must be fed. Credit with the tradesmen had undergone very slight expansion when

he was matched with Sandel. The secretary of the Gayety Club had advanced him three poundsthe loser's

end of the purseand beyond that had refused to go. Now and again he had managed to borrow a few

shillings from old pals, who would have lent more only that it was a drought year and they were hard put

themselves. Noand there was no use in disguising the facthis training had not been satisfactory. He

should have had better food and no worries. Besides, when a man is forty, it is harder to get into condition

"They'll be startin' the first bout in a few minutes," he said. "Only a tryout. Then there's a fourround spar

'tween Dealer Wells an' Gridley, an' a tenround go 'tween Starlight an' some sailor bloke. I don't come on for

He reached for his hat and started for the door. He did not offer to kiss herhe never did on going outbut

on this night she dared to kiss him, throwing her arms around him and compelling him to bend down to her

"Ay, I gotter do 'im," he repeated. "That's all there is to it. I jus' gotter do 'im."

He laughed with an attempt at heartiness, while she pressed more closely against him. Across her shoulders

he looked around the bare room. It was all he had in the world, with the rent overdue, and her and the kiddies.

And he was leaving it to go out into the night to get meat for his mate and cubsnot like a modern

workingman going to his machine grind, but in the old, primitive, royal, animal way, by fighting for it.

"I gotter do 'im," he repeated, this time a hint of desperation in his voice. "If it's a win, it's thirty quidan' I

can pay all that's owin', with a lump o' money left over. If it's a lose, I get naughtnot even a penny for me

to ride home on the tram. The secretary's give all that's comin' from a loser's end. Goodbye, old woman. I'll

It was full two miles to the Gayety, and as he walked along he remembered how in his palmy dayshe had

once been the heavyweight champion of New South Waleshe would have ridden in a cab to the fight, and

how, most likely, some heavy backer would have paid for the cab and ridden with him. There were Tommy

Burns and that Yankee nigger, Jack Johnsonthey rode about in motorcars. And he walked! And, as any

man knew, a hard two miles was not the best preliminary to a fight. He was an old un, and the world did not

wag well with old uns. He was good for nothing now except navvy work, and his broken nose and swollen

ear were against him even in that. He found himself wishing that he had learned a trade. It would have been

better in the long run. But no one had told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have

listened if they had. It had been so easy. Big moneysharp, glorious fightsperiods of rest and loafing in

betweena following of eager flatterers, the slaps on the back, the shakes of the hand, the toffs glad to buy

him a drink for the privilege of five minutes' talkand the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind

finish, the referee's "King wins!" and his name in the sporting columns next day.

Those had been times! But he realized now, in his slow, ruminating way, that it was the old uns he had been

putting away. He was Youth, rising; and they were Age, sinking. No wonder it had been easythey with

their swollen veins and battered knuckles and weary in the bones of them from the long battles they had

already fought. He remembered the time he put out old Stowsher Bill, at RushCutters Bay, in the eighteenth

round, and how old Bill had cried afterward in the dressingroom like a baby. Perhaps old Bill's rent had

been overdue. Perhaps he'd had at home a missus an' a couple of kiddies. And perhaps Bill, that very day of

the fight, had had a hungering for a piece of steak. Bill had fought game and taken incredible punishment. He

could see now, after he had gone through the mill himself, that Stowsher Bill had fought for a bigger stake,

that night twenty years ago, than had young Tom King, who had fought for glory and easy money. No

Well, a man had only so many fights in him, to begin with. It was the iron law of the game. One man might

have a hundred hard fights in him, another man only twenty; each, according to the make of him and the

quality of his fibre, had a definite number, and, when he had fought them, he was done. Yes, he had had more

fights in him than most of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling fightsthe

kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots

of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary

from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none

of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, and he had

They had tried him out against the old uns, and one after another he had put them awaylaughing when, like

old Stowsher Bill, they cried in the dressingroom. And now he was an old un, and they tried out the

youngsters on him. There was that bloke, Sandel. He had come over from New Zealand with a record behind

him. But nobody in Australia knew anything about him, so they put him up against old Tom King. If Sandel

made a showing, he would be given better men to fight, with bigger purses to win; so it was to be depended

upon that he would put up a fierce battle. He had everything to win by itmoney and glory and career; and

Tom King was the grizzled old choppingblock that guarded the highway to fame and fortune. And he had

nothing to win except thirty quid, to pay to the landlord and the tradesmen. And, as Tom King thus

ruminated, there came to his stolid vision the form of Youth, glorious Youth, rising exultant and invincible,

supple of muscle and silken of skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and that laughed

at limitation of effort. Yes, Youth was the Nemesis. It destroyed the old uns and recked not that, in so doing,

it destroyed itself. It enlarged its arteries and smashed its knuckles, and was in turn destroyed by Youth. For

At Castlereagh Street he turned to the left, and three blocks along came to the Gayety. A crowd of young

larrikins hanging outside the door made respectful way for him, and he heard one say to another: "That's 'im!

Inside, on the way to his dressingroom, he encountered the secretary, a keeneyed, shrewdfaced young

"Fit as a fiddle," King answered, though he knew that he lied, and that if he had a quid, he would give it right

When he emerged from the dressingroom, his seconds behind him, and came down the aisle to the squared

ring in the centre of the hall, a burst of greeting and applause went up from the waiting crowd. He

acknowledged salutations right and left, though few of the faces did he know. Most of them were the faces of

kiddies unborn when he was winning his first laurels in the squared ring. He leaped lightly to the raised

platform and ducked through the ropes to his corner, where he sat down on a folding stool. Jack Ball, the

referee, came over and shook his hand. Ball was a broken down pugilist who for over ten years had not

entered the ring as a principal. King was glad that he had him for referee. They were both old uns. If he

should rough it with Sandel a bit beyond the rules, he knew Ball could be depended upon to pass it by.

Aspiring young heavyweights, one after another, were climbing into the ring and being presented to the

"Young Pronto," Bill announced, "from North Sydney, challenges the winner for fifty pounds side bet."

The audience applauded, and applauded again as Sandel himself sprang through the ropes and sat down in his

corner. Tom King looked across the ring at him curiously, for in a few minutes they would be locked together

in merciless combat, each trying with all the force of him to knock the other into unconsciousness. But little

could he see, for Sandel, like himself, had trousers and sweater on over his ring costume. His face was

strongly handsome, crowned with a curly mop of yellow hair, while his thick, muscular neck hinted at bodily

Young Pronto went to one corner and then the other, shaking hands with the principals and dropping down

out of the ring. The challenges went on. Ever Youth climbed through the ropesYouth unknown, but

insatiablecrying out to mankind that with strength and skill it would match issues with the winner. A few

years before, in his own heyday of invincibleness, Tom King would have been amused and bored by these

preliminaries. But now he sat fascinated, unable to shake the vision of Youth from his eyes. Always were

these youngsters rising up in the boxing game, springing through the ropes and shouting their defiance; and

always were the old uns going down before them. They climbed to success over the bodies of the old uns.

And ever they came, more and more youngstersYouth unquenchable and irresistible and ever they put

the old uns away, themselves becoming old uns and travelling the same downward path, while behind them,

ever pressing on them, was Youth eternalthe new babies, grown lusty and dragging their elders down, with

behind them more babies to the end of timeYouth that must have its will and that will never die.

King glanced over to the press box and nodded to Morgan, of the Sportsman, and Corbett, of the Referee.

Then he held out his hands, while Sid Sullivan and Charley Bates, his seconds, slipped on his gloves and

laced them tight, closely watched by one of Sandel's seconds, who first examined critically the tapes on

King's knuckles. A second of his own was in Sandel's corner, performing a like office. Sandel's trousers were

pulled off, and, as he stood up, his sweater was skinned off over his head. And Tom King, looking, saw

Youth incarnate, deepchested, heavythewed, with muscles that slipped and slid like live things under the

white satin skin. The whole body was acrawl with life, and Tom King knew that it was a life that had never

oozed its freshness out through the aching pores during the long fights wherein Youth paid its toll and

The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the gong sounded and the seconds clattered out of the ring

with the folding stools, they shook hands and instantly took their fighting attitudes. And instantly, like a

mechanism of steel and springs balanced on a hair trigger, Sandel was in and out and in again, landing a left

to the eyes, a right to the ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away and dancing menacingly back again.

He was swift and clever. It was a dazzling exhibition. The house yelled its approbation. But King was not

dazzled. He had fought too many fights and too many youngsters. He knew the blows for what they

weretoo quick and too deft to be dangerous. Evidently Sandel was going to rush things from the start. It

was to be expected. It was the way of Youth, expending its splendour and excellence in wild insurgence and

furious onslaught, overwhelming opposition with its own unlimited glory of strength and desire.

Sandel was in and out, here, there, and everywhere, lightfooted and eager hearted, a living wonder of white

flesh and stinging muscle that wove itself into a dazzling fabric of attack, slipping and leaping like a flying

shuttle from action to action through a thousand actions, all of them centred upon the destruction of Tom

King, who stood between him and fortune. And Tom King patiently endured. He knew his business, and he

knew Youth now that Youth was no longer his. There was nothing to do till the other lost some of his steam,

was his thought, and he grinned to himself as he deliberately ducked so as to receive a heavy blow on the top

of his head. It was a wicked thing to do, yet eminently fair according to the rules of the boxing game. A man

was supposed to take care of his own knuckles, and, if he insisted on hitting an opponent on the top of the

head, he did so at his own peril. King could have ducked lower and let the blow whiz harmlessly past, but he

remembered his own early fights and how he smashed his first knuckle on the head of the Welsh Terror. He

was but playing the game. That duck had accounted for one of Sandel's knuckles. Not that Sandel would

mind it now. He would go on, superbly regardless, hitting as hard as ever throughout the fight. But later on,

when the long ring battles had begun to tell, he would regret that knuckle and look back and remember how

The first round was all Sandel's, and he had the house yelling with the rapidity of his whirlwind rushes. He

overwhelmed King with avalanches of punches, and King did nothing. He never struck once, contenting

himself with covering up, blocking and ducking and clinching to avoid punishment. He occasionally feinted,

shook his head when the weight of a punch landed, and moved stolidly about, never leaping or springing or

wasting an ounce of strength. Sandel must foam the froth of Youth away before discreet Age could dare to

retaliate. All King's movements were slow and methodical, and his heavylidded, slowmoving eyes gave

him the appearance of being half asleep or dazed. Yet they were eyes that saw everything, that had been

trained to see everything through all his twenty years and odd in the ring. They were eyes that did not blink or

Seated in his corner for the minute's rest at the end of the round, he lay back with outstretched legs, his arms

resting on the right angle of the ropes, his chest and abdomen heaving frankly and deeply as he gulped down

the air driven by the towels of his seconds. He listened with closed eyes to the voices of the house, "Why

"Musclebound," he heard a man on a front seat comment. "He can't move quicker. Two to one on Sandel, in

The gong struck and the two men advanced from their corners. Sandel came forward fully threequarters of

the distance, eager to begin again; but King was content to advance the shorter distance. It was in line with

his policy of economy. He had not been well trained, and he had not had enough to eat, and every step

counted. Besides, he had already walked two miles to the ringside. It was a repetition of the first round, with

Sandel attacking like a whirlwind and with the audience indignantly demanding why King did not fight.

Beyond feinting and several slowly delivered and ineffectual blows he did nothing save block and stall and

clinch. Sandel wanted to make the pace fast, while King, out of his wisdom, refused to accommodate him. He

grinned with a certain wistful pathos in his ring battered countenance, and went on cherishing his strength

with the jealousy of which only Age is capable. Sandel was Youth, and he threw his strength away with the

munificent abandon of Youth. To King belonged the ring generalship, the wisdom bred of long, aching fights.

He watched with cool eyes and head, moving slowly and waiting for Sandel's froth to foam away. To the

majority of the onlookers it seemed as though King was hopelessly outclassed, and they voiced their opinion

in offers of three to one on Sandel. But there were wise ones, a few, who knew King of old time, and who

The third round began as usual, onesided, with Sandel doing all the leading, and delivering all the

punishment. A halfminute had passed when Sandel, overconfident, left an opening. King's eyes and right

arm flashed in the same instant. It was his first real blowa hook, with the twisted arch of the arm to make it

rigid, and with all the weight of the half pivoted body behind it. It was like a sleepyseeming lion suddenly

thrusting out a lightning paw. Sandel, caught on the side of the jaw, was felled like a bullock. The audience

gasped and murmured awestricken applause. The man was not musclebound, after all, and he could drive a

Sandel was shaken. He rolled over and attempted to rise, but the sharp yells from his seconds to take the

count restrained him. He knelt on one knee, ready to rise, and waited, while the referee stood over him,

counting the seconds loudly in his ear. At the ninth he rose in fighting attitude, and Tom King, facing him,

knew regret that the blow had not been an inch nearer the point of the jaw. That would have been a

knockout, and he could have carried the thirty quid home to the missus and the kiddies.

The round continued to the end of its three minutes, Sandel for the first time respectful of his opponent and

King slow of movement and sleepyeyed as ever. As the round neared its close, King, warned of the fact by

sight of the seconds crouching outside ready for the spring in through the ropes, worked the fight around to

his own corner. And when the gong struck, he sat down immediately on the waiting stool, while Sandel had

to walk all the way across the diagonal of the square to his own corner. It was a little thing, but it was the sum

of little things that counted. Sandel was compelled to walk that many more steps, to give up that much

energy, and to lose a part of the precious minute of rest. At the beginning of every round King loafed slowly

out from his corner, forcing his opponent to advance the greater distance. The end of every round found the

fight manoeuvred by King into his own corner so that he could immediately sit down.

Two more rounds went by, in which King was parsimonious of effort and Sandel prodigal. The latter's

attempt to force a fast pace made King uncomfortable, for a fair percentage of the multitudinous blows

showered upon him went home. Yet King persisted in his dogged slowness, despite the crying of the young

hotheads for him to go in and fight. Again, in the sixth round, Sandel was careless, again Tom King's fearful

By the seventh round Sandel's pink of condition was gone, and he settled down to what he knew was to be the

hardest fight in his experience. Tom King was an old un, but a better old un than he had ever

encounteredan old un who never lost his head, who was remarkably able at defence, whose blows had the

impact of a knotted club, and who had a knockout in either hand. Nevertheless, Tom King dared not hit often.

He never forgot his battered knuckles, and knew that every hit must count if the knuckles were to last out the

fight. As he sat in his corner, glancing across at his opponent, the thought came to him that the sum of his

wisdom and Sandel's youth would constitute a world's champion heavyweight. But that was the trouble.

Sandel would never become a world champion. He lacked the wisdom, and the only way for him to get it was

to buy it with Youth; and when wisdom was his, Youth would have been spent in buying it.

King took every advantage he knew. He never missed an opportunity to clinch, and in effecting most of the

clinches his shoulder drove stiffly into the other's ribs. In the philosophy of the ring a shoulder was as good as

a punch so far as damage was concerned, and a great deal better so far as concerned expenditure of effort.

Also, in the clinches King rested his weight on his opponent, and was loath to let go. This compelled the

interference of the referee, who tore them apart, always assisted by Sandel, who had not yet learned to rest.

He could not refrain from using those glorious flying arms and writhing muscles of his, and when the other

rushed into a clinch, striking shoulder against ribs, and with head resting under Sandel's left arm, Sandel

almost invariably swung his right behind his own back and into the projecting face. It was a clever stroke,

much admired by the audience, but it was not dangerous, and was, therefore, just that much wasted strength.

But Sandel was tireless and unaware of limitations, and King grinned and doggedly endured.

Sandel developed a fierce right to the body, which made it appear that King was taking an enormous amount

of punishment, and it was only the old ringsters who appreciated the deft touch of King's left glove to the

other's biceps just before the impact of the blow. It was true, the blow landed each time; but each time it was

robbed of its power by that touch on the biceps. In the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King's right

hooked its twisted arch to the jaw; and three times Sandel's body, heavy as it was, was levelled to the mat.

Each time he took the nine seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken and jarred, but still strong. He

had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. He was fighting grimly; but he continued to draw upon

his chief asset, which was Youth. King's chief asset was experience. As his vitality had dimmed and his

vigour abated, he had replaced them with cunning, with wisdom born of the long fights and with a careful

shepherding of strength. Not alone had he learned never to make a superfluous movement, but he had learned

how to seduce an opponent into throwing his strength away. Again and again, by feint of foot and hand and

body he continued to inveigle Sandel into leaping back, ducking, or countering. King rested, but he never

Early in the tenth round King began stopping the other's rushes with straight lefts to the face, and Sandel,

grown wary, responded by drawing the left, then by ducking it and delivering his right in a swinging hook to

the side of the head. It was too high up to be vitally effective; but when first it landed, King knew the old,

familiar descent of the black veil of unconsciousness across his mind. For the instant, or for the slighest

fraction of an instant, rather, he ceased. In the one moment he saw his opponent ducking out of his field of

vision and the background of white, watching faces; in the next moment he again saw his opponent and the

background of faces. It was as if he had slept for a time and just opened his eyes again, and yet the interval of

unconsciousness was so microscopically short that there had been no time for him to fall. The audience saw

him totter and his knees give, and then saw him recover and tuck his chin deeper into the shelter of his left

Several times Sandel repeated the blow, keeping King partially dazed, and then the latter worked out his

defence, which was also a counter. Feinting with his left he took a halfstep backward, at the same time

upper cutting with the whole strength of his right. So accurately was it timed that it landed squarely on

Sandel's face in the full, downward sweep of the duck, and Sandel lifted in the air and curled backward,

striking the mat on his head and shoulders. Twice King achieved this, then turned loose and hammered his

opponent to the ropes. He gave Sandel no chance to rest or to set himself, but smashed blow in upon blow till

the house rose to its feet and the air was filled with an unbroken roar of applause. But Sandel's strength and

endurance were superb, and he continued to stay on his feet. A knockout seemed certain, and a captain of

police, appalled at the dreadful punishment, arose by the ringside to stop the fight. The gong struck for the

end of the round and Sandel staggered to his corner, protesting to the captain that he was sound and strong.

Tom King, leaning back in his corner and breathing hard, was disappointed. If the fight had been stopped, the

referee, perforce, would have rendered him the decision and the purse would have been his. Unlike Sandel, he

was not fighting for glory or career, but for thirty quid. And now Sandel would recuperate in the minute of

Youth will be servedthis saying flashed into King's mind, and he remembered the first time he had heard

it, the night when he had put away Stowsher Bill. The toff who had bought him a drink after the fight and

patted him on the shoulder had used those words. Youth will be served! The toff was right. And on that night

in the long ago he had been Youth. Tonight Youth sat in the opposite corner. As for himself, he had been

fighting for half an hour now, and he was an old man. Had he fought like Sandel, he would not have lasted

fifteen minutes. But the point was that he did not recuperate. Those upstanding arteries and that sorely tried

heart would not enable him to gather strength in the intervals between the rounds. And he had not had

sufficient strength in him to begin with. His legs were heavy under him and beginning to cramp. He should

not have walked those two miles to the fight. And there was the steak which he had got up longing for that

morning. A great and terrible hatred rose up in him for the butchers who had refused him credit. It was hard

for an old man to go into a fight without enough to eat. And a piece of steak was such a little thing, a few

With the gong that opened the eleventh round, Sandel rushed, making a show of freshness which he did not

really possess. King knew it for what it wasa bluff as old as the game itself. He clinched to save himself,

then, going free, allowed Sandel to get set. This was what King desired. He feinted with his left, drew the

answering duck and swinging upward hook, then made the halfstep backward, delivered the upper cut full to

the face and crumpled Sandel over to the mat. After that he never let him rest, receiving punishment himself,

but inflicting far more, smashing Sandel to the ropes, hooking and driving all manner of blows into him,

tearing away from his clinches or punching him out of attempted clinches, and ever when Sandel would have

fallen, catching him with one uplifting hand and with the other immediately smashing him into the ropes

The house by this time had gone mad, and it was his house, nearly every voice yelling: "Go it, Tom!" "Get

'im! Get 'im!" "You've got 'im, Tom! You've got 'im!" It was to be a whirlwind finish, and that was what a

And Tom King, who for half an hour had conserved his strength, now expended it prodigally in the one great

effort he knew he had in him. It was his one chancenow or not at all. His strength was waning fast, and his

hope was that before the last of it ebbed out of him he would have beaten his opponent down for the count.

And as he continued to strike and force, coolly estimating the weight of his blows and the quality of the

damage wrought, he realized how hard a man Sandel was to knock out. Stamina and endurance were his to an

extreme degree, and they were the virgin stamina and endurance of Youth. Sandel was certainly a coming

man. He had it in him. Only out of such rugged fibre were successful fighters fashioned.

Sandel was reeling and staggering, but Tom King's legs were cramping and his knuckles going back on him.

Yet he steeled himself to strike the fierce blows, every one of which brought anguish to his tortured hands.

Though now he was receiving practically no punishment, he was weakening as rapidly as the other. His

blows went home, but there was no longer the weight behind them, and each blow was the result of a severe

effort of will. His legs were like lead, and they dragged visibly under him; while Sandel's backers, cheered by

King was spurred to a burst of effort. He delivered two blows in successiona left, a trifle too high, to the

solar plexus, and a right cross to the jaw. They were not heavy blows, yet so weak and dazed was Sandel that

he went down and lay quivering. The referee stood over him, shouting the count of the fatal seconds in his

ear. If before the tenth second was called, he did not rise, the fight was lost. The house stood in hushed

silence. King rested on trembling legs. A mortal dizziness was upon him, and before his eyes the sea of faces

sagged and swayed, while to his ears, as from a remote distance, came the count of the referee. Yet he looked

Only Youth could rise, and Sandel rose. At the fourth second he rolled over on his face and groped blindly

for the ropes. By the seventh second he had dragged himself to his knee, where he rested, his head rolling

groggily on his shoulders. As the referee cried "Nine!" Sandel stood upright, in proper stalling position, his

left arm wrapped about his face, his right wrapped about his stomach. Thus were his vital points guarded,

while he lurched forward toward King in the hope of effecting a clinch and gaining more time.

At the instant Sandel arose, King was at him, but the two blows he delivered were muffled on the stalled

arms. The next moment Sandel was in the clinch and holding on desperately while the referee strove to drag

the two men apart. King helped to force himself free. He knew the rapidity with which Youth recovered, and

he knew that Sandel was his if he could prevent that recovery. One stiff punch would do it. Sandel was his,

indubitably his. He had outgeneralled him, outfought him, outpointed him. Sandel reeled out of the

clinch, balanced on the hair line between defeat or survival. One good blow would topple him over and down

and out. And Tom King, in a flash of bitterness, remembered the piece of steak and wished that he had it then

behind that necessary punch he must deliver. He nerved himself for the blow, but it was not heavy enough

nor swift enough. Sandel swayed, but did not fall, staggering back to the ropes and holding on. King

staggered after him, and, with a pang like that of dissolution, delivered another blow. But his body had

deserted him. All that was left of him was a fighting intelligence that was dimmed and clouded from

exhaustion. The blow that was aimed for the jaw struck no higher than the shoulder. He had willed the blow

higher, but the tired muscles had not been able to obey. And, from the impact of the blow, Tom King himself

reeled back and nearly fell. Once again he strove. This time his punch missed altogether, and, from absolute

weakness, he fell against Sandel and clinched, holding on to him to save himself from sinking to the floor.

King did not attempt to free himself. He had shot his bolt. He was gone. And Youth had been served. Even in

the clinch he could feel Sandel growing stronger against him. When the referee thrust them apart, there,

before his eyes, he saw Youth recuperate. From instant to instant Sandel grew stronger. His punches, weak

and futile at first, became stiff and accurate. Tom King's bleared eyes saw the gloved fist driving at his jaw,

and he willed to guard it by interposing his arm. He saw the danger, willed the act; but the arm was too

heavy. It seemed burdened with a hundredweight of lead. It would not lift itself, and he strove to lift it with

his soul. Then the gloved fist landed home. He experienced a sharp snap that was like an electric spark, and,

When he opened his eyes again he was in his corner, and he heard the yelling of the audience like the roar of

the surf at Bondi Beach. A wet sponge was being pressed against the base of his brain, and Sid Sullivan was

blowing cold water in a refreshing spray over his face and chest. His gloves had already been removed, and

Sandel, bending over him, was shaking his hand. He bore no illwill toward the man who had put him out

and he returned the grip with a heartiness that made his battered knuckles protest. Then Sandel stepped to the

centre of the ring and the audience hushed its pandemonium to hear him accept young Pronto's challenge and

offer to increase the side bet to one hundred pounds. King looked on apathetically while his seconds mopped

the streaming water from him, dried his face, and prepared him to leave the ring. He felt hungry. It was not

the ordinary, gnawing kind, but a great faintness, a palpitation at the pit of the stomach that communicated

itself to all his body. He remembered back into the fight to the moment when he had Sandel swaying and

tottering on the hairline balance of defeat. Ah, that piece of steak would have done it! He had lacked just

that for the decisive blow, and he had lost. It was all because of the piece of steak.

His seconds were halfsupporting him as they helped him through the ropes. He tore free from them, ducked

through the ropes unaided, and leaped heavily to the floor, following on their heels as they forced a passage

for him down the crowded centre aisle. Leaving the dressingroom for the street, in the entrance to the hall,

The doors of the publichouse at the corner were swinging wide, and he saw the lights and the smiling

barmaids, heard the many voices discussing the fight and the prosperous chink of money on the bar.

Somebody called to him to have a drink. He hesitated perceptibly, then refused and went on his way.

He had not a copper in his pocket, and the twomile walk home seemed very long. He was certainly getting

old. Crossing the Domain, he sat down suddenly on a bench, unnerved by the thought of the missus sitting up

for him, waiting to learn the outcome of the fight. That was harder than any knockout, and it seemed almost

He felt weak and sore, and the pain of his smashed knuckles warned him that, even if he could find a job at

navvy work, it would be a week before he could grip a pick handle or a shovel. The hunger palpitation at the

pit of the stomach was sickening. His wretchedness overwhelmed him, and into his eyes came an unwonted

moisture. He covered his face with his hands, and, as he cried, he remembered Stowsher Bill and how he had

served him that night in the long ago. Poor old Stowsher Bill! He could understand now why Bill had cried in