Options
by O'Henry
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

CONTENTS

"The Rose of Dixie"
The Third Ingredient
The Hiding of Black Bill
Schools and Schools
Thimble, Thimble
Supply and Demand
Buried Treasure
To Him Who Waits
He Also Serves
The Moment of Victory
The Head-Hunter
No Story
The Higher Pragmatism
Best-Seller
Rus in Urbe
A Poor Rule

OPTIONS

"THE ROSE OF DIXIE"

When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in
Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief
editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair
was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family,
reputation, and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and
logical editor. So, a committee of the patriotic Georgia citizens who
had subscribed the founding fund of $100,000 called upon Colonel
Telfair at his residence, Cedar Heights, fearful lest the enterprise
and the South should suffer by his possible refusal.

The colonel received them in his great library, where he spent most of
his days. The library had descended to him from his father. It
contained ten thousand volumes, some of which had been published as
late as the year 1861. When the deputation arrived, Colonel Telfair
was seated at his massive white-pine centre-table, reading Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy. He arose and shook hands punctiliously with
each member of the committee. If you were familiar with The Rose of
Dixie you will remember the colonel's portrait, which appeared in it
from time to time. You could not forget the long, carefully brushed
white hair; the hooked, high-bridged nose, slightly twisted to the
left; the keen eyes under the still black eyebrows; the classic mouth
beneath the drooping white mustache, slightly frazzled at the ends.

The committee solicitously offered him the position of managing
editor, humbly presenting an outline of the field that the publication
was designed to cover and mentioning a comfortable salary. The
colonel's lands were growing poorer each year and were much cut up by
red gullies. Besides, the honor was not one to be refused.

In a forty-minute speech of acceptance, Colonel Telfair gave an
outline of English literature from Chaucer to Macaulay, re-fought the
battle of Chancellorsville, and said that, God helping him, he would
so conduct The Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would
permeate the entire world, hurling back into the teeth of the Northern
minions their belief that no genius or good could exist in the brains
and hearts of the people whose property they had destroyed and whose
rights they had curtailed.

Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and furnished in the
second floor of the First National Bank building; and it was for the
colonel to cause The Rose of Dixie to blossom and flourish or to wilt
in the balmy air of the land of flowers.

The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor-Colonel Telfair
drew about him was a peach. It was a whole crate of Georgia peaches.
The first assistant editor, Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father
killed during Pickett's charge. The second assistant, Keats Unthank,
was the nephew of one of Morgan's Raiders. The book reviewer, Jackson
Rockingham, had been the youngest soldier in the Confederate army,
having appeared on the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a
milk-bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a
third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia Terhune,
the colonel's stenographer and typewriter, had an aunt who had once
been kissed by Stonewall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office-boy,
got his job by having recited Father Ryan's poems, complete, at the
commencement exercises of the Toombs City High School. The girls who
wrapped and addressed the magazines were members of old Southern
families in Reduced Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named
Hawkins, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a bond
from a guarantee company filed with the owners. Even Georgia stock
companies sometimes realize that it takes live ones to bury the dead.

Well, sir, if you believe me, The Rose of Dixie blossomed five times
before anybody heard of it except the people who buy their hooks and
eyes in Toombs City. Then Hawkins climbed off his stool and told on
'em to the stock company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been used to
having his business propositions heard of at least as far away as
Detroit. So an advertising manager was engaged -- Beauregard Fitzhugh
Banks, a young man in a lavender necktie, whose grandfather had been
the Exalted High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan.

In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out every month.
Although in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the
Luxembourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of
people bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor-
Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old
home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving of the second battle of
Manassas, entitled "Lee to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word
biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list
that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by
Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of
Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson, nephew of one of the
stockholders. And an article from a special society correspondent
describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and English set,
where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests
masquerading as Indians.

One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a mirror, he was so
much alive, entered the office of The Rose of Dixie. He was a man
about the size of a real-estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a
manner that he must have borrowed conjointly from W J. Bryan,
Hackenschmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the editor-
colonel's pons asinorum. Colonel Telfair rose and began a Prince
Albert bow.

"I'm Thacker," said the intruder, taking the editor's chair--"T. T.
Thacker, of New York."

He dribbled hastily upon the colonel's desk some cards, a bulky manila
envelope, and a letter from the owners of The Rose of Dixie. This
letter introduced Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair
to give him a conference and whatever information about the magazine
he might desire.

"I've been corresponding with the secretary of the magazine owners for
some time," said Thacker, briskly. "I'm a practical magazine man
myself, and a circulation booster as good as any, if I do say it.
I'll guarantee an increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred
thousand a year for any publication that isn't printed in a dead
language. I've had my eye on The Rose of Dixie ever since it started.
I know every end of the business from editing to setting up the
classified ads. Now, I've come down here to put a good bunch of money
in the magazine, if I can see my way clear. It ought to be made to
pay. The secretary tells me it's losing money. I don't see why a
magazine in the South, if it's properly handled, shouldn't get a
good circulation in the North, too.

"Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished his gold-rimmed
glasses.

"Mr. Thacker," said he, courteously but firmly, "The Rose of Dixie is
a publication devoted to the fostering and the voicing of Southern
genius. Its watchword, which you may have seen on the cover, is 'Of,
For, and By the South.'"

"But you wouldn't object to a Northern circulation, would you?" asked
Thacker.

"I suppose," said the editor-colonel, "that it is customary to open
the circulation lists to all. I do not know. I have nothing to do
with the business affairs of the magazine. I was called upon to
assume editorial control of it, and I have devoted to its conduct such
poor literary talents as I may possess and whatever store of erudition
I may have acquired."

"Sure," said Thacker. "But a dollar is a dollar anywhere, North,
South, or West--whether you're buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky
Ford cantaloupes. Now, I've been looking over your November number.
I see one here on your desk. You don't mind running over it with me?

"Well, your leading article is all right. A good write-up of the
cotton-belt with plenty of photographs is a winner any time. New York
is always interested in the cotton crop. And this sensational account
of Hatfield-McCoy feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Governor of
Kentucky, isn't such a bad idea. It happened so long ago that most
people have forgotten it. Now, here's a poem three pages long called
'The Tyrant's Foot,' by Lorella Lascelles. I've pawed around a good
deal over manuscripts, but I never saw her name on a rejection slip."

"Miss Lascelles," said the editor, "is one of our most widely
recognized Southern poetesses. She is closely related to the Alabama
Lascelles family, and made with her own hands the silken Confederate
banner that was presented to the governor of that state at his
inauguration."

"But why," persisted Thacker, "is the poem illustrated with a view of
the M. & 0. Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?"

"The illustration," said the colonel, with dignity, "shows a corner of
the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was
born."

"All right," said Thacker. "I read the poem, but I couldn't tell  
whether it was about the depot of the battle of Bull Run. Now, here's
a short story called 'Rosies' Temptation,' by Fosdyke Piggott. It's
rotten. What is a Piggott, anyway?"

"Mr. Piggott," said the editor, "is a brother of the principal
stockholder of the magazine."

"All's right with the world--Piggott passes," said Thacker. "Well  
this article on Arctic exploration and the one on tarpon fishing might
go. But how about this write-up of the Atlanta, New Orleans,
Nashville, and Savannah breweries? It seems to consist mainly of
statistics about their output and the quality of their beer. What's
the chip over the bug?"

"If I understand your figurative language," answered Colonel Telfair,
"it is this: the article you refer to was handed to me by the owners
of the magazine with instructions to publish it. The literary quality
of it did not appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to
conform, in certain matters, to the wishes of the gentlemen who are
interested in the financial side of The Rose."

"I see," said Thacker. "Next we have two pages of selections from
'Lalla Rookh,' by Thomas Moore. Now, what Federal prison did Moore
escape from, or what's the name of the F. F. V. family that he
carries as a handicap?"

"Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852," said Colonel Telfair,
pityingly. "He is a classic. I have been thinking of reprinting his
translation of Anacreon serially in the magazine."

"Look out for the laws,"  said Thacker, flippantly.  Who's
Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the essay on the newly completed
water-works plant in Milledgeville?"

"The name, sir," said Colonel Telfair, "is the nom de guerre of Miss
Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor of knowing the lady; but her
contribution was sent to us by Congressman Brower, of her native
state. Congressman Brower's mother was related to the Polks of
Tennessee.

"Now, see here, Colonel," said Thacker, throwing down the magazine,
"this won't do. You can't successfully run a magazine for one
particular section of the country. You've got to make a universal
appeal. Look how the Northern publications have catered to the South
and encouraged the Southern writers. And you've got to go far and
wide for your contributors. You've got to buy stuff according to its
quality without any regard to the pedigree of the author. Now, I'll
bet a quart of ink that this Southern parlor organ you've been running
has never played a note that originated about Mason & Hamlin's line.
Am I right?"

"I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all contributions from
that section of the country--if I understand your figurative language
aright," replied the colonel.

"All right. Now I'll show you something."

Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of
typewritten manuscript on the editors desk.

"Here's some truck," said he, "that I paid cash for, and brought along
with me."

One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed their first pages
to the colonel.

Here are four short stories four of the highest priced authors in the
United States--three of 'em living in New York, and one commuting.
There's a special article on Vienna-bred society by Tom Vampson.
Here's an Italian serial by Captain Jack--no--it's the other Crawford.
Here are three separate exposes of city governments by Sniffings, and
here's a dandy entitled 'What Women Carry in Dress-Suit Cases'--a
Chicago newspaper woman hired herself out for five years as a lady's
maid to get that information. And here's a Synopsis of Preceding
Chapters of Hall Caine's new serial to appear next June. And here's a
couple of pounds of vers de societe that I got at a rate from the
clever magazines. That's the stuff that people everywhere want. And
now here's a writeup with photographs at the ages of four, twelve,
twenty-two, and thirty of George B. McClellan. It's a
prognostication. He's bound to be elected Mayor of New York. It '11
make a big hit all over the country. He--"

"I beg your pardon," said Colonel Telfair, stiffening in his chair.
"What was the name?"

"Oh, I see," said Thacker, with half a grin. Yes, he's a son of the
General. We'll pass that manuscript up. But, if you'll excuse me,
Colonel, it's a magazine we're trying to make go off--not the first
gun at Fort Sumter. Now, here's a thing that's bound to get next to
you. It's an original poem by James Whitcomb Riley. J.W. himself.
You know what that means to a magazine. I won't tell you what I had
to pay for that poem; but I'll tell you this--Riley can make more
money writing with a fountain-pen than you or I can with one that lets
the ink run. I'll read you the last two stanzas:

"'Pa lays around 'n' loafs all day,
   'N' reads and makes us leave him be.
He lets me do just like I please,
   'N' when I'm in bad he laughs at me,
'N' when I holler loud 'n' say
   Bad words 'n' then begin to tease
The cat, 'n' pa just smiles, ma's mad
   'N' gives me Jesse crost her knees.
      I always wondered why that wuz-
      I guess it's cause
           Pa never does.

"''N' after all the lights are out
   I'm sorry 'bout it; so I creep
Out of my trundle bed to ma's
   'N' say I love her a whole heap,
'N' kiss her, 'n' I hug her tight.
   'N' it's too dark to see her eyes,
But every time I do I know
   She cries 'n' cries 'n' cries 'n' cries.
      I always wondered why that wuz-
      I guess it's 'cause
         Pa never does.'

"That's the stuff," continued Thacker. "What do you think of that?"

"I am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley," said the colonel,
deliberately. "I believe he lives in Indiana. For the last ten years
I have been somewhat of a literary recluse, and am familiar with
nearly all the books in the Cedar Heights library. I am also of the
opinion that a magazine should contain a certain amount of poetry.
Many of the sweetest singers of the South have already contributed to
the pages of The Rose of Dixie. I, myself, have thought of
translating from the original for publication in its pages the works
of the great Italian poet Tasso. Have you ever drunk from the
fountain of this immortal poet's lines, Mr. Thacker?"

"Not even a demi-Tasso," said Thacker.

Now, let's come to the point, Colonel Telfair. I've already invested
some money in this as a flyer. That bunch of manuscripts cost me
$4,000. My object was to try a number of them in the next issue-I
believe you make up less than a month ahead--and see what effect it
has on the circulation. I believe that by printing the best stuff we
can get in the North, South, East, or West we can make the magazine
go. You have there the letter from the owning company asking you to
co-operate with me in the plan. Let's chuck out some of this slush
that you've been publishing just because the writers are related to
the Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. Are you with me?"

"As long as I continue to be the editor of The Rose," said Colonel
Telfair, with dignity, "I shall be its editor. But I desire also to
conform to the wishes of its owners if I can do so conscientiously."

"That's the talk," said Thacker, briskly. "Now, how much of this
stuff I've brought can we get into the January number? We want to
begin right away."

"There is yet space in the January number," said the editor, "for
about eight thousand words, roughly estimated."

"Great!" said Thacker. "It isn't much, but it'll give the readers
some change from goobers, governors, and Gettysburg. I'll leave the
selection of the stuff I brought to fill the space to you, as it's all
good. I've got to run back to New York, and I'll be down again in a
couple of weeks."

Colonel Telfair slowly swung his eye-glasses by their broad, black
ribbon.

"The space in the January number that I referred to," said he,
measuredly, "has been held open purposely, pending a decision that I
have not yet made. A short time ago a contribution was submitted to
The Rose of Dixie that is one of the most remarkable literary efforts
that has ever come under my observation. None but a master mind and
talent could have produced it. It would just fill the space that I
have reserved for its possible use."

Thacker looked anxious.

"What kind of stuff is it?" he asked. "Eight thousand words sounds
suspicious. The oldest families must have been collaborating. Is
there going to be another secession ?"

"The author of the article," continued the colonel, ignoring Thacker's
allusions, "is a writer of some reputation. He has also distinguished
himself in other ways. I do not feel at liberty to reveal to you his
name--at least not until I have decided whether or not to accept his
contribution."

"Well," said Thacker, nervously, "is it a continued story, or an
account of the unveiling of the new town pump in Whitmire, South
Carolina, or a revised list of General Lee's body-servants, or what?"

"You are disposed to be facetious," said Colonel Telfair, calmly.
"The article is from the pen of a thinker, a philosopher, a lover of
mankind, a student, and a rhetorician of high degree."

"It must have been written by a syndicate," said Thacker. "But,
honestly, Colonel, you want to go slow. I don't know of any eight-
thousand-word single doses of written matter that are read by anybody
these days, except Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder trials.
You haven't by any accident gotten hold of a copy of one of Daniel
Webster's speeches, have you?"

Colonel Telfair swung a little in his chair and looked steadily from
under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine promoter.

"Mr. Thacker," he said, gravely, "I am willing to segregate the
somewhat crude expression of your sense of humor from the solicitude
that your business investments undoubtedly have conferred upon you.
But I must ask you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon
the South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be tolerated
in the office of The Rose of Dixie for one moment. And before you
proceed with more of your covert insinuations that I, the editor of
this magazine, am not a competent judge of the merits of the matter
submitted to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some
evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, shape, or form
relative to the question in hand."

"Oh, come, Colonel," said Thacker, good-naturedly. "I didn't do
anything like that to you. It sounds like an indictment by the fourth
assistant attorney-general. Let's get back to business. What's this
8,000 to 1 shot about?"

"The article," said Colonel Telfair, acknowledging the apology by a
slight bow, "covers a wide area of knowledge. It takes up theories
and questions that have puzzled the world for centuries, and disposes
of them logically and concisely. One by one it holds up to view the
evils of the world, points out the way of eradicating them; and then
conscientiously and in detail comments the good. There is hardly a
phase of human life that it does not discuss wisely, calmly, and
equitably. The great policies of governments, the duties of private
citizens, the obligations of home life, law, ethics, morality--all
these important subjects are handled with a calm wisdom and confidence
that I must confess has captured my admiration."

"It must be a crackerjack," said Thacker, impressed.

"It is a great contribution to the world's wisdom," said the colonel.
"The only doubt remaining in my mind as to the tremendous advantage it
would be to us to give it publication in The Rose of Dixie is that I
have not yet sufficient information about the author to give his work
publicity in our magazine.

"I thought you said he is a distinguished man," said Thacker.

"He is," replied the colonel, "both in literary and in other more
diversified and extraneous fields. But I am extremely careful about
the matter that I accept for publication. My contributors are people
of unquestionable repute and connections, which fact can be verified
at any time. As I said, I am holding this article until I can acquire
more information about its author. I do not know whether I will
publish it or not. If I decide against it, I shall be much pleased,
Mr. Thacker, to substitute the matter that you are leaving with me in
its place."

Thacker was somewhat at sea.

"I don't seem to gather," said he, "much about the gist of this
inspired piece of literature. It sounds more like a dark horse than
Pegasus to me."

"It is a human document," said the colonel-editor, confidently, "from
a man of great accomplishments who, in my opinion, has obtained a
stronger grasp on the world and its outcomes than that of any man
living to-day."

Thacker rose to his feet excitedly.

"Say!" he said. "It isn't possible that you've cornered John D.
Rockefeller's memoirs, is it? Don't tell me that all at once."

No, sir," said Colonel Telfair. "I am speaking of mentality and
literature not of the less worthy intricacies of trade."

Well, what's the trouble about running the article," asked Thacker, a
little impatiently, "if the man's well known and has got the stuff ?"
Colonel Telfair sighed.

"Mr. Thacker," said he, "for once I have been tempted. Nothing has
yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has not been from the pen of
one of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this
article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the
country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I
recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an
investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I
shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open
the question of filling the vacant space in our January number."

Thacker arose to leave.

"All right, Colonel," he said, as cordially as he could. "You use
your own judgment. If you've really got a scoop or something that
will make 'em sit up, run it instead of my stuff. I'll drop in again
in about two weeks. Good luck!"

Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands.

Returning a fortnight later, Thacker dropped off a very rocky Pullman
at Toombs City. He found the January number of the magazine made up
and the forms closed.

The vacant space that had been yawning for type was filled by an
article that was headed thus:

                    SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

                           Written for

                         THE ROSE OF DIXIE

                                 BY

                    A Member of the Well-known

                    BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA

                            T. Roosevelt

THE THIRD INGREDIENT

The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house.
It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences
welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps
and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the
sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You
may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may have one for
twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers,
musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students,
wire-tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister-rail
when the door-bell rings.

This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians--
though meaning no disrespect to the others.

At six o'clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back to her third-floor
rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with her nose and chin more sharply
pointed than usual. To be discharged from the department store where
you have been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in your
purse, does have a tendency to make your features appear more finely
chiseled.

And now for Hetty's thumb-nail biography while she climbs the two
flights of stairs.

She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four years before with
seventy-five other girls, applying for a job behind the waist
department counter. The phalanx of wage-earners formed a bewildering
scene of beauty, carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to
have justified the horseback gallops of a hundred Lady Godivas.

The capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man whose task
it was to engage six of the contestants, was aware of a feeling of
suffocation as if he were drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while
white clouds, hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail
hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, with small,
contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in a suit
of plain burlap and a common-sense hat, stood before him with every
one of her twenty-nine years of life unmistakably in sight.

"You're on!." shouted the bald-headed young man, and was saved. And
that is how Hetty came to be employed in the Biggest Store. The story
of her rise to an eight-dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories
of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. You
shall not learn from me the salary that was paid her as a beginner.
There is a sentiment growing about such things, and I want no
millionaire store-proprietors climbing the fire-escape of my tenement-
house to throw dynamite bombs into my skylight boudoir.

The story of Hetty's discharge from the Biggest Store is so nearly a
repetition of her engagement as to be monotonous.

In each department of the store there is an omniscient, omnipresent,
and omnivorous person carrying always a mileage book and a red
necktie, and referred to as a "buyer."  The destinies of the girls in
his department who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics)--so much
per week are in his hands.

This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young,
bald-headed man. As he walked along the aisles of his department lie
seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds,
machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring
surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald
eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a
desert of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched
her arm kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three
feet away with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily-
white right. So, now you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the
Biggest Store at thirty minutes' notice, with one dime and a nickel in
her purse.

This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per
(butcher's) pound. But on the day that Hetty was "released" by the B.
S. the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes
this story possible. Otherwise, the extra  four cents would have--

But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned
with shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with
this one.

Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One
hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would
be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan
of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.

In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot
china--er--I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a
rats'-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out
with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.

There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef-
Stew can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup
without oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without
coffee, but you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.

But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door
look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt
and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a
little cold water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster a la
Newburg nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve.

Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall.
According to the advertisements of the Vallambrosa there was running
water to be found there. Between you and me and the water-meter, it
only ambled or walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no
place here. There was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often
met to dump their coffee grounds and glare at one another's kimonos.

At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair
and plaintive eyes, washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew
the Vallambrosa as well as any one not owning "double hextra-
magnifying eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her
encyclopedia, her "Who's What?" her clearinghouse of news, of goers
and comers. From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had
learned that the girl with the potatoes was a miniature-painter living
in a kind of attic--or "studio," as they prefer to call it--on the top
floor. Hetty was not certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it
certainly wasn't a house; because house-painters, although they wear
splashy overalls and poke ladders in your face on the street, are
known to indulge in a riotous profusion of food at home.

The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled her potatoes as
an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who is cutting teeth. She had a
dull shoemaker's knife in her right hand, and she had begun to peel
one of the potatoes with it.

Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of one who
intends to be cheerfully familiar with you in the second round.

"Beg pardon," she said, "for butting into what's not my business, but
if you peel them potatoes you lose out. They're new Bermudas. You
want to scrape 'em. Lemme show you."

She took a potato and the knife, and began to demonstrate.

"Oh, thank you," breathed the artist. "I didn't know. And I did hate
to see the thick peeling go; it seemed such a waste. But I thought
they always had to be peeled. When you've got only potatoes to eat,
the peelings count, you know."

"Say, kid," said Hetty, staying her knife, "you ain't up against it,
too, are you?"

The miniature artist smiled starvedly.

"I suppose I am. Art--or, at least, the way I interpret it--doesn't
seem to be much in demand. I have only these potatoes for my dinner.
But they aren't so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and salt."

"Child," said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her rigid features,
"Fate has sent me and you together. I've had it handed to me in the
neck, too; but I've got a chunk of meat in my, room as big as a lap-dog.
And I've done everything to get potatoes  except pray for 'em.
Let's me and you bunch our commissary  departments and make a stew of 'em.
We'll cook it in my room. If we  only had an onion to go in it!
Say, kid, you haven't got a couple of pennies that've slipped down
into the lining of your last winter's sealskin, have you?
I could step down to the corner and get one at old Giuseppe's stand.
A stew without an onion is worse'n a matinee without candy."

"You may call me Cecilia," said the artist. "No; I spent my last
penny three days ago."

"Then we'll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing it in," said
Hetty. "I'd ask the janitress for one, but I don't want 'em hep just
yet to the fact that I'm pounding the asphalt for another job. But I
wish we did have an onion."

In the shop-girl's room the two began to prepare their supper.
Cecilia's part was to sit on the couch helplessly and beg to be
allowed to do something, in the voice of a cooing ring-dove. Hetty
prepared the rib beef, putting it in cold salted water in the stew-pan
and setting it on the one-burner gas-stove.

"I wish we had an onion," said Hetty, as she scraped the two potatoes.

On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, gorgeous
advertising picture of one of the new ferry-boats of the P. U. F.
F. Railroad that had been built to cut down the time between Los
Angeles and New York City one-eighth of a minute.

Hetty, turning her head during her continuous monologue, saw tears
running from her guest's eyes as she gazed on the idealized
presentment of the speeding, foam-girdled transport.

"Why, say, Cecilia, kid," said Hetty, poising her knife, "is it as bad
art as that? I ain't a critic; but I thought it kind of brightened up
the room. Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum
picture in a minute. I'll take it down if you say so. I wish to the
holy Saint Potluck we had an onion."

But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, sobbing, with
her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery of the couch. Something was
here deeper than the artistic temperament offended at crude
lithography.

Hetty knew. She had accepted her role long ago. How scant the words
with which we try to describe a single quality of a human being! When
we reach the abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the
babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. Figuratively
(let us say), some people are Bosoms, some are Hands, some are Heads,
some are Muscles, some are Feet, some are Backs for burdens.

Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy shoulder; but all her
life people had laid their heads upon it, metaphorically or actually,
and had left there all or half their troubles. Looking at Life
anatomically, which is as good a way as any, she was preordained to be
a Shoulder. There were few truer collar-bones anywhere than hers.

Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet outlived the little
pang that visited her whenever the head of youth and beauty leaned
upon her for consolation. But one glance in her mirror always served
as an instantaneous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the
crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down
the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went
over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia's head to its confessional.

"Go on and tell me, honey," she said. "I know now that it ain't art
that's worrying you. You met him on a ferry-boat, didn't you? Go on,
Cecilia, kid, and tell your--your Aunt Hetty about it."

But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus of sighs and
tears that waft and float the barque of romance to its harbor in the
delectable isles. Presently, through the stringy tendons that formed
the bars of the confessional, the penitent--or was it the glorified
communicant of the sacred flame--told her story without art or
illumination.

"It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the ferry from
Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art dealer, told me of a rich man in
Newark who wanted a miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see
him and showed him some of my work. When I told him the price would
be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said an enlarged
crayon twenty times the size would cost him only eight dollars.

"I had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back to New York. I
felt as if I didn't want to live another day. I must have looked as I
felt, for I saw him on the row of seats opposite me, looking at me as
if he understood. He was nice-looking, but oh, above everything else,
he looked kind. When one is tired or unhappy or hopeless, kindness
counts more than anything else.

"When I got so miserable that I couldn't fight against it any longer,
I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin.
No one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail and dropped into
the water. Oh, friend Hetty, it was cold, cold!

"For just one moment I wished I was back in the old Vallambrosa,
starving and hoping. And then I got numb, and didn't care. And then
I felt that somebody else was in the water close by me, holding me up.
He had followed me, and jumped in to save me.

"Somebody threw a thing like a big, white doughnut at us, and he made
me put my arms through the hole. Then the ferry-boat backed, and they
pulled us on board. Oh, Hetty, I was so ashamed of my wickedness in
trying to drown myself; and, besides, my hair had all tumbled down and
was sopping wet, and I was such a sight.

"And then some men in blue clothes came around; and he gave them his
card, and I heard him tell them he had seen me drop my purse on the
edge of the boat outside the rail, and in leaning over to get it I had
fallen overboard.

And then I remembered having read in the papers that people who try to
kill themselves are locked up in cells with people who try to kill
other people, and I was afraid.

"But some ladies on the boat took me downstairs to the furnace-room
and got me nearly dry and did up my hair. When the boat landed, he
came and put me in a cab. He was all dripping himself, but laughed as
if he thought it was all a joke. He begged me, but I wouldn't tell
him my name nor where I lived, I was so ashamed."

"You were a fool, child," said Hetty, kindly. "Wait till I turn the
light up a bit. I wish to Heaven we had an onion."

"Then he raised his hat," went on Cecilia, "and said: 'Very well. But
I'll find you, anyhow. I'm going to claim my rights of salvage.'  
Then he gave money to the cab-driver and told him to take me where I
wanted to go, and walked away. What is 'salvage,' Hetty?"

"The edge of a piece of goods that ain't hemmed," said the shop-girl.
"You must have looked pretty well frazzled out to the little hero
boy."

"It's been three days," moaned the miniature-painter, "and he hasn't
found me yet."

"Extend the time," said Hetty. "This is a big town. Think of how
many girls he might have to see soaked in water with their hair down
before he would recognize you. The stew's getting on fine--but oh,
for an onion! I'd even use a piece'of garlic if I had it."

The beef and potatoes bubbled merrily, exhaling a mouth-watering savor
that yet lacked something, leaving a hunger on the palate, a haunting,
wistful desire for some lost and needful ingredient.

"I came near drowning in that awful river," said Cecilia, shuddering.

"It ought to have more water in it," said Hetty; "the stew, I mean.
I'll go get some at the sink."

"It smells good," said the artist.

"That nasty old North River?"  objected Hetty. "It smells to me like
soap factories and wet setter-dogs--oh, you mean the stew. Well, I
wish we had an onion for it. Did he look like he had money?"

"First, he looked kind,'' said Cecilia. "I'm sure he was rich; but
that matters so little. When he drew out his bill-folder to pay the
cab-man you couldn't help seeing hundreds and thousands of dollars in
it. And I looked over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry
station in a motor-car; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin to put
on, for he was sopping wet. And it was only three days ago."

"What a fool!" said Hetty, shortly.

"Oh, the chauffeur wasn't wet," breathed Cecilia. "And he drove the
car away very nicely."

"I mean you," said Hetty. "For not giving him your address."

"I never give my address to chauffeurs," said Cecilia, haughtily.

"I wish we had one," said Hetty, disconsolately.

"What for?"

"For the stew, of course--oh, I mean an onion."

Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end of the hall.

A young man came down the stairs from above just as she was opposite
the lower step. He was decently dressed, but pale and haggard. His
eyes were dull with the stress of some burden of physical or mental
woe. In his hand he bore an onion--a pink, smooth, solid, shining
onion as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock.

Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something Joan of
Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the look and pose of the shoplady--
she had cast off the roles of Job and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The
young man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distractedly.
He felt marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, levied upon, sacked,
assessed, panhandled, browbeaten, though he knew not why. It was the
look in Hetty's eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly
to the masthead and an able seaman with a dirk between his teeth
scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. But as yet he did not know
that the cargo he carried was the thing that had caused him to be so
nearly blown out of the water without even a parley.

"Beg your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid
tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There
was a hole in the paper bag; and I've just come out to look for it."

The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have given
him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched his
pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim
waylayer.

"No," he said huskily, "I didn't find it on the stairs. It was given
to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don't believe it, ask
him. I'll wait until you do."

"I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes books and
things up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman
guy him all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back.
Say--do you live in the Vallambrosa?"

"I do not," said the young man. "I come to see Bevens sometimes.
He's my friend. I live two blocks west."

"What are you going to do with the onion?

--begging your pardon," said Hetty.

"I'm going to eat it."

"Raw?"

"Yes: as soon as I get home."

"Haven't you got anything else to eat with it?"

The young man considered briefly.

"No," he confessed; "there's not another scrap of anything in my
diggings to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his
shack, too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into
parting with it."

"Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying
a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, "you've known trouble,
too, haven't you?"

"Lots," said the onion owner, promptly. "But this onion is my own
property, honestly come by. If you will excuse me, I must be going."

"Listen," said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. "Raw onion is a
mighty poor diet. And so is a beef-stew without one. Now, if you're
Jack Bevens' friend, I guess you're nearly right. There's a little
lady--a friend of mine--in my room there at the end of the hall. Both
of us are out of luck; and we had just potatoes and meat between us.
They're stewing now. But it ain't got any soul. There's something
lacking to it. There's certain things in life that are naturally
intended to fit and belong together. One is pink cheese-cloth and
green roses, and one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish and trouble.
And the other one is beef and potatoes with onions. And still another
one is people who are up against it and other people in the same fix."

The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of coughing. With one
hand he hugged his onion to his bosom.

"No doubt; no doubt," said he, at length. "But, as I said, I must be
going, because--"

Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly.

"Don't be a Dago, Little Brother. Don't cat raw onions. Chip it in
toward the dinner and line yourself inside with the best stew you ever
licked a spoon over. Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and
drag him inside for the honor of dining with 'em? No harm shall
befall you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into line."

The young man's pale face relaxed into a grin.

"Believe I'll go you," he said, brightening. "If my onion is good as
a credential, I'll accept the invitation gladly."

"It's good as that, but better as seasoning," said Hetty. "You come
and stand outside the door till I ask my lady friend if she has any
objections. And don't run away with that letter of recommendation
before I come out."

Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The young man waited
outside.

"Cecilia, kid," said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw of her voice
as well as she could, "there's an onion outside. With a young man
attached. I've asked him in to dinner. You ain't going to kick, are
you?"

"Oh, dear!" said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her artistic hair.
She cast a mournful glance at the ferry-boat poster on the wall.

"Nit," said Hetty. "It ain't him. You're up against real life now.
I believe you said your hero friend had money and automobiles. This
is a poor skeezicks that's got nothing to eat but an onion. But he's
easy-spoken and not a freshy. I imagine he's been a gentleman, he's
so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I bring him in? I'll
guarantee his behavior."

"Hetty, dear," sighed Cecilia, "I'm so hungry. What difference does
it make whether he's a prince or a burglar? I don't care. Bring him
in if he's got anything to eat with him."

Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was gone. Her heart
missed a beat, and a gray look settled over her face except on her
nose and cheek-bones. And then the tides of life flowed in again, for
she saw him leaning out of the front window at the other end of the
hall. She hurried there. He was shouting to some one below. The
noise of the street overpowered the sound of her footsteps. She
looked down over his shoulder, saw whom he was speaking to, and heard
his words. He pulled himself in from the window-sill and saw her
standing over him.

Hetty's eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets.

"Don't lie to me," she said, calmly. "What were you going to do with
that onion?"

The young man suppressed a cough and faced her resolutely. His manner
was that of one who had been bearded sufficiently.

"I was going to eat it," said he, with emphatic slowness; "just as I
told you before."

"And you have nothing else to eat at home?"

"Not a thing."

"What kind of work do you do?"

"I am not working at anything just now."

"Then why," said Hetty, with her voice set on its sharpest edge, "do
you lean out of windows and give orders to chauffeurs in green
automobiles in the street below?"

The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to sparkle.

"Because, madam," said he, in accelerando tones, "I pay the
chauffeur's wages and I own the automobile--and also this onion--this
onion, madam."

He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty's nose. The shop-lady
did not retreat a hair's-breadth.

"Then why do you eat onions," she said, with biting contempt, "and
nothing else?"

"I never said I did," retorted the young man, heatedly. "I said I had
nothing else to eat where I live. I am not a delicatessen store-
keeper."

"Then why," pursued Hetty, inflexibly, "were you going to eat a raw
onion?"

"My mother," said the young man, "always made me eat one for a cold.
Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you may have noticed
that I have a very, very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion
and go to bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing to you
for it."

"How did you catch this cold?" went on Hetty, suspiciously.

The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of
feeling. There were two modes of descent open to him--a burst of rage
or a surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall
echoed his hoarse laughter.

"You're a dandy," said he. "And I don't blame you for being careful.
I don't mind telling you. I got wet. I was on a North River ferry a
few days ago when a girl jumped overboard. Of course, I--"

Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story.

"Give me the onion," she said.

The young man set his jaw a trifle harder.

"Give me the onion," she repeated.

He grinned, and laid it in her hand.

Then Hetty's infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself. She
took the young man's arm and pointed with her other hand to the door
of her room.

"Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little fool you fished
out of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. I'll give you
three minutes before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on
in, Onions."

After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and
wash the onion at the sink. She gave a gray look at the gray roofs
outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and
twitches.

"But it's us," she said, grimly, to herself, "it's us that furnishes
the beef."

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery
eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los
Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat,
melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the
appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat--
seamy on both sides.

"Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which
way you been travelling?"

"Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me.
And I found it warm in Texas. I'll tell you about one hot spell I
went through there.

"One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it
go on without me. 'Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses
than New York City. Only out there they build 'em twenty miles away
so you can't smell what they've got for dinner, instead of running 'em
up two inches from their neighbors' windows.

"There wasn't any roads in sight, so I footed it 'cross country. The
grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a
peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman's private estate that
every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite
you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a
ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-
railroad station.

"There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink
handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front
of the door.

"'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even
work for a comparative stranger?'

"'Oh, come in,' says he, in a refined tone. 'Sit down on that stool,
please. I didn't hear your horse coming.'

"'He isn't near enough yet,' says I. 'I walked. I don't want to be a
burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water
handy.'

"'You do look pretty dusty,' says he; 'but our bathing arrangements--'

"'It's a drink I want,' says I. 'Never mind the dust that's on the
outside.'

"He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then
goes on:

"'Do you want work?'

"'For a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the
country, isn't it?'

"'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes--so I have been told--one sees no human
being pass for weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I
bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'

"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man
sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture,
float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'

"'Can you herd sheep ?' asks the little ranch-man.

"'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I.

"'Can you herd 'em--take charge of a flock of 'em ?' says he.

"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark
at 'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly
done any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows
masticating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'

"'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on
the Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of
muttons--there are only eight hundred of 'em--in the morning, if you
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished.
You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own
cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy
job.'

"'I'm on,' says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my
brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe
like the shepherds do in pictures.'

"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions
about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving
'em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.

"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping
outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer,
ain't it?"

"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint
Clair.'

"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the
wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next
to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of
persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd
drive 'em to the corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my
corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a
table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing
around the camp.

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep
are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on
a mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if
it's only to knock somebody's brains out.'

"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-
rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was
calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in
Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer
for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken
to be his brother. I didn't care much for him  either way; what I
wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost
sinners--anything sheepless would do.

"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I
guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny
that it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so
they won't stray out ?

"'They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,'
says I. 'And I'll be back with them long before they'll need their
trained nurse.'

"So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five
days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When
I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in
Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story
about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

"That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much
that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or
Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell,
and you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew Shall Not
Ring To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

"By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a
total eclipse of sheep.

"'Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,' says he,
'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was
shot through the shoulder, and about $15,000 in currency taken. And
it's said that only one man did the job.'

"'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they
don't linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake,
overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon the despoiler?'

"'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day
that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country.
It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency
to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed
the trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.'

"Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

"'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal
boose, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train
robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell.
A sheep-ranch, now,' says I, would be the finest kind of a place.
Who'd ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song-
birds and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of
looking H. Ogden over, 'was there any description mentioned of this
single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or
teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print ?'

"'Why, no,' says Ogden; 'they say nobody got a good sight of him
because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called
Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped a
handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.'

"'All right,' says I. 'I approve of Black Bill's retreat to the
sheep-ranges. I guess they won't find him.'

"'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture,' says Ogden.

"'I don't need that kind of money,' says I, looking Mr. Sheepman
straight in the eye. 'The twelve dollars a month you pay me is
enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my
fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I
goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, was to have come down this
way--say, a month ago--and bought a little sheep-ranch and--'

"'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty
vicious. 'Do you mean to insinuate--'

"'Nothing,' says I; 'no insinuations. I'm stating a hypodermical
case. I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-
ranch and hired me to Little-Boy-Blue 'em and treated me square and
friendly, as you've done, he'd never have anything to fear from me. A
man is a man, regardless of any complications he may have with sheep
or railroad trains. Now you know where I stand.'

"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he
laughs, amused.

"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't
be afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to-
night. That is, if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.'

"'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings
to 'em.'

"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the
idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.

"'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'

"'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over
there. But didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food
poor? Now, I hail,' says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up
there?'

"'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you've ever in the Middle West
just mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.'

"'Well,' says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone
number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the
Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you
to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play
hearts on spades, and don't get nervous.'

"'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that
if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester
bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?'

"'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train
single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that. I've knocked about
enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a
friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,'
says I, 'being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious
circumstances we might have been.'

"'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for
deal.'

"About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water-
hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides
softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he
wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City
detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His
chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a
scout.

"'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.

"'Well,' says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I
wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old
bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.'

"'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he.

"'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I.

"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho
Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me
he's a deputy sheriff.

"'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in
these parts,' says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San
Antonio, and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers
around here during the past month?'

"'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican
quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio.'

"'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy.

"'He's three days old,' says I.

"'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for ?' he asks.
'Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for
the last ten years, but never had no success.'

"'The old man has sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another
sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.'

"'What kind of a looking man is he ?' asks the deputy again.

"'Oh,' says I, ' a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and
blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I
guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,' says I.

"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information
and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.

"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. "'They're drawing the
tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told
him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy,
and what the deputy said about the matter.

"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's
troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the
cupboard and we'll drink to his health--unless,' says he, with his
little cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.'

"'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I
believe that Black Bill,' I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to
Black Bill, and may he have good luck.'

"And both of us drank.

"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be
driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip
the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon
before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over
the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the
ranch-house, where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nightly
adieus.

"I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire,
lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by
anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to
the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed
like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to
just a few musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way,
might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.'

A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is
all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family
connections? He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his
friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against
the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of
Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how
she looks, you know it's better for all hands for her to be that way.

"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to
be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his
table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical
culture--and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

"After I'd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H.
O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where
there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a
kind of a creek farther away.

"I saw five men riding up to the house. All of 'em carried guns
across their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to
me at my camp.

"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I
set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker
of this law-and-order cavalry.

"'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your
horses?'

"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in
it seems to cover my whole front elevation.

"'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge
in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.'

"'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not
have to disobey your injunctions in replying.'

"'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held
up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and
everybody on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this
ranch?'

"'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my
name is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals--no, muttons--penned
here to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair-
cut--with baa-a-rum, I suppose.'

"'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me.

"'Wait just a minute, cap'n,' says I. 'Wasn't there a kind of a
reward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have
referred to in your preamble?'

"'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but
it's for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no
provision made for an informer.'

"'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way,
looking up at the cerulean blue sky.

"'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or
secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect,
'you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.'

"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice,
'that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the
Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a
sheepman's cousin two weeks ago.'

"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking
me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill,
I'll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own--out of our own--pockets.
That's liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what
do you say?'

"'Cash down now?' I asks.

"The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all
produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the
general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug
tobacco.

"'Come nearer, capitan meeo,' says I, 'and listen.'  He so did.

"'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working
for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together
whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,' says I, 'I
regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a
come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form
of chops. I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled
ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R.
R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati--dry gin, French vermouth,
one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're
ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I,
'I have never yet went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when
they had plenty, and when adversity's overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.

"'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve
dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not
consider brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a
poor man,' says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You
will find Black Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in
the room to your right. He's the man you want, as I know from his
words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,' I explains, 'and
if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola
would not have tempted me to betray him. But,' says I, 'every week
half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.

"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at
times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would
look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.'

"So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers
their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I
follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson.

"The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he
jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was
mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives 'em as neat a single-
footed tussle against odds as I ever see.

"'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.

"'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's
all.'

"'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet.

"'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't
bothering you, and there's a law against monkeying with express
packages.'

"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets
symptomatically and careful.

"'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some
himself. 'I can prove who I am.'

"'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden's inside
coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of
Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-
card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than
this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and
expatriate your sins.

"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they
have taken the money off of him.

"'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip
off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is
seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the
captain.

"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's
horse, and the sheriffs all ride tip close around him with their guns
in hand, ready to take their prisoner to town.

"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and
gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just
as if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours
afterward one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho
Chiquito, might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars--wages
and blood-money--in his pocket, riding south on another horse
belonging to said ranch."

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head
slowly and disparagingly.

"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?"

"No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like
your talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen
year; and I never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the
law--not no one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at
whose table you had played games of cards--if casino can be so called.
And yet you inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was
like you, I say."

"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved
himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard
afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated
to hand him over."

"How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man.

"I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when
I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here
she comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the
tank."

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS

I

Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East
Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he
could afford to walk--for his health--a few blocks in the direction of
his office every morning, and then call a cab.

He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert--Cyril
Scott could play him nicely--who was becoming a successful painter as
fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member
of the household was Barbara Ross, a stepniece. Man is born to
trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the
burdens of others.

Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and
tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a
floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old
Jerome's money in a state of high commotion. But at this point
complications must be introduced.

Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a
brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody
else's fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had
a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that
smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic
and the spelling St. Vitusy.

It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and
deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of
pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had
failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted
him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was
shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate,
comfort, and cherish for the rest of her natural life or until
matrimony should them part.

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is
supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-
fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the
turtle has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men
like old Jerome.

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so,
I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?

They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply
sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly
unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude
upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect
to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls
or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she
sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she
swung along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain
to wrest from her.

"I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at
the firm, sunburned cheek.

"I hope so," said Nevada.

"Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my home
as if it were your father's own."

"Thanks," said Nevada.

"And I am going to call you 'cousin,'" said Gilbert, with his charming
smile.

"Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds.
It's got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to
Barbara. "I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand
tons, but I promised him to bring them along."

II

It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one
man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a
nobleman, or--well, any of those problems--as the triangle. But they
are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles--never
equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert
and Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that
triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse.

One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the
dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his down-
town fly-trap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her
much of his dead brother's quiet independence and unsuspicious
frankness.

A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren.

"A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please," she said. "He's
waiting for an answer."

Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between her teeth, and
watching  the carriages and autos roll by in the street, took the
envelope. She knew it was from Gilbert, before she opened it, by the
little gold palette in the upper left-hand corner.

After tearing it open she pored over the contents for a while,
absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went and stood at her
uncle's elbow.

"Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn't he?"

"Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his paper loudly;
"of course he is. I raised him myself."

"He wouldn't write anything to anybody that wasn't exactly--I mean
that everybody couldn't know and read, would he?"

"I'd just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a handful from
his newspaper. "Why, what--"

"Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you think it's all
right and proper. You see, I don't know much about city people and
their ways."

Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet upon it. He
took Gilbert's note and fiercely perused it twice, and then a third
time.

"Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, although I was sure
of that boy. He's a duplicate of his father, and he was a gilt-edged
diamond. He only asks if you and Barbara will be ready at four
o'clock this afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island. I
don't see anything to criticise in it except the stationery. I always
did hate that shade of blue."

"Would it be all right to go?" asked Nevada, eagerly.

"Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it pleases me to
see you so careful and candid. Go, by all means."

"I didn't know," said Nevada, demurely. "I thought I'd ask you.
Couldn't you go with us, uncle?"

"I? No, no, no, no! I've ridden once in a car that boy was driving.
Never again! But it's entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes,
yes. But I will not. No, no, no, no!"

Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid:

"You bet we'll go. I'll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say
to Mr. Warren, 'You bet we'll go.'"

"Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, but wouldn't it be
as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do."

"No, I won't bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. "Gilbert will
understand--he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life;
but I've paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost
Horse Canon, and if it's any livelier than that I'd like to know!"

III

Two months are supposed to have elapsed.

Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was
a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men
and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from
divers difficulties. There are cloisters,  wailing-places, watering-
places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyer's offices, beauty parlors,
air-ships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.

It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the
longest side of a triangle. But it's a long
line that has no turning.

Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.
Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in
the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every
day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a
lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose
taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy.

Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested
upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed
letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper
left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette.
It had been delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left.

Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter
contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or
a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods,
because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to
read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a
strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had
too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.

At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. it was a delicious
winter night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were
powdered thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the
cast. Old Jerome growled good-naturedly about villanous cab service
and blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire
eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the mountains around dad's
cabin. During all these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart,
sawed wood--the only appropriate thing she could think of to do.

Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and
quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted
room, subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task
of unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the
demerits of the "show."

"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing--sometimes," said Barbara.
"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just
after you had gone."

"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.

"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The
envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls
a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school-
girl's valentine."

"I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly.

"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what
is in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use
scissors, and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."

She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.

"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are
a nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the
hide off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get
these gloves off!"

"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's
for you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"

Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.

"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.
"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again
to-morrow."

Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy
would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter,
with an indulgent, slightly bored air.

"Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to."

She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling
eyes; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who,
for the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest,
and letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.

For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth
only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than
a twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.

Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman  
Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another,
sifts her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most
hidden desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like
hairs from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and
fingers before letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental
doubt. Long ago Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence
in Paradise Park, bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he
introduced. Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic
eyebrow.

"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a
palm. ''I suppose you've been there, of course?"

"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods
are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes
have made your dress open a little in the back."

So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed
that woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass-though
glass was yet to be discovered-to other women, and that she should
palm herself off on man as a mystery.

Barbara seemed to hesitate.

"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I-I'm sure it wasn't
meant for any one else to know."

Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.

"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's
the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any
one else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody
should know it."

"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says:

'Dearest Nevada--Come to my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not
fail.'"  Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm
awfully sorry," she said, "that I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There
must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will
you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I'm sure
I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too
well, and will explain. Good night!"

IV

Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen
minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the
city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot
deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-
ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as
quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like
white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars-
-sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like
submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and
weight.

"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"

"I--I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past
him.

The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it
prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half.
She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon
sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building
loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-
remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor,
art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the door numbered "89."  She had been there many times before, with
Barbara and Uncle Jerome.

Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green
shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the
floor.

"Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and me
were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!"

Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue of
stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted
Nevada, got a whiskbroom, and began to brush the snow from her
clothes. A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where
the artist had been sketching in crayon.

"You wanted me," said Nevada simply, " and I came. You said so in
your letter. What did you send for me for?"

"You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for wind.

"Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 'Come to my
studio at twelve to-night, and do not fail.'  I thought you were sick,
of course, but you don't seem to be."

"Aha!" said Gilbert irrelevantly. "I'll tell you why I asked you to
come, Nevada. I want you to marry me immediately -- to-night. What's
a little snow-storm? Will you do it?"

"You might have noticed that I would, long ago," said Nevada. "And
I'm rather stuck on the snow-storm idea, myself. I surely would hate
one of these flowery church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn't know you
had grit enough to propose it this way. Let's shock 'em--it's our
funeral, ain't it?"

"You bet!" said Gilbert. "Where did I hear that expression?" he added
to himself. "Wait a minute, Nevada; I want to do a little 'phoning."

He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called upon the
lightnings of tile heavens--condensed into unromantic numbers and
districts.

"That you, Jack? You confounded sleepyhead! Yes, wake up; this is
me--or I--oh, bother the difference in grammar! I'm going to be
married right away. Yes! Wake up your sister--don't answer me back;
bring her along, too--you must!. Remind Agnes of the time I saved her
from drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma--I know it's caddish to refer to it,
but she must come with you. Yes. Nevada is here, waiting. We've
been engaged quite a while. Some opposition among the relatives, you
know, and we have to pull it off this way. We're waiting her