forgetting to describe my grotesque dress and my bewildered condition in the foggy station.

I could see that my guest was deeply interested. He rallied me on my infatuation. He laughed at my humorous points with that joyous abandon with which a man laughs after dinner. As I told him of my love for this girl, taking him into my confidence to a greater degree than I have taken the reader, he grew quite sympathetic.

"Devilish fine girl," he cried, "and she's fond of you too, Doctor. Don't you give her up

"I never give up anything I get my hands on," said I. "Coe, that's a peculiarity of mine."

"Fine scene that in the moonlight," said he, filling his glass. "And she gave you no reason for her refusal ?"

Oh, yes, she did," said I. "Her father was charged with a crime-embezzling the funds of a trust or something of that sort. She told me herself like a martyr, rather than subject him to pain.

"Did she, though?" said Philip Coe, starting forward into an attitude of enthusiastic admiration. "Lattimer, that girl is a thoroughbred. I'm half in love with her myself. She is an American through and through. And then raising his tiny glass in his fingers, "Let us drink the health of Miss

"Dangerking," I suggested, "from Charleston."

His eyes flashed on mine. His cold face changed color for an instant, but his hand holding the brimming glass was without a sign of tremor. "Marry her, my dear fellow," he said. "She is worthy of you. Her health

"Wait a moment," I said; "the suspicion that attaches to her father can only be removed by the discovery of the securities he is charged with having taken. Those securities, Philip Coe," I said, rising and pointing my finger at my guest. "Those securities

"Are locked in your strong box. Pray be seated, Dr. Lattimer. Any heat on your part is most unbecoming at this time. As your guest, I would save you from marring your hospitality with the slightest rudeness. We evidently understand each other. Let us

adjourn to your office and talk this matter over calmly."

Philip Coe led the way and I followed in silence, thankful that he had saved me from any further elaboration of my charges. Arrived in my office, he faced about and addressed me as follows:

"You have won some distinction, Dr. Lattimer, in the practice of your profession; a condition I carefully avoid in the practice of mine. We both regard advertising as highly unprofessional. We will waive the fact that I have been dining at your table. Without further waste of words, Dr. Lattimer, I shall trouble you to return me the package I handed you before dinner. I am prepared to enforce my demand."

We were both standing; the table with its shaded lamp between us, and as Philip Coe made his demand he thrust his hand behind him with a motion which I perfectly understood.

The next instant a gleaming revolver was pointed at my head. I mildly suggested that the secret of the combination which held the package he wanted was known to me alone. "What would be the advantage to you of adding murder," I said, "to the already long list of your crimes?"

A malignant gleam of hatred shot from his evil eyes. I remembered the cool precision with which he levelled his camera and the admirable prudence that governed the drop of his shutter. He was not the man to waste a plate or a bullet.

The curtain rustled in the faint evening breeze, making the only sound in the lighted room since I had ceased to speak.

"Close that window, Dr. Lattimer," was the only reply he made to my remonstrance. I turned to the window. The two officers I had summoned were leaning against a lamp-post on the opposite side of the street. The light fell full on them. They were looking directly across. No unusual sound or movement could escape their observation.

Before I close this window," said I, "let me call your attention to those two figures over the way," and I drew the curtains aside sufficiently to give him an uninterrupted view. "They are awaiting a sign or a motion from me."

He made no reply, but the hand holding the weapon was lowered. I no longer feared him.

"Sit down, Philip Coe," said I. "Instead of sending for cigars an hour ago, I sent for those gentlemen. It is not necessary for them to observe us further at present."

I drew the curtains together.

"You are a remarkable man, Dr. Lattimer. You buy out florists, and summon police officers with equal foresight. Would you mind throwing this dangerous weapon in your waste-paper basket?"

I did precisely as he requested me. "I know when I am beaten," he said, seating himself at the table. He bit off the end of a cigar, lighted it, and passed it under his nose as if to assure himself of its quality. I couldn't help admiring his cool self-possession. Critical as the situation was, my remarkable guest showed no signs of fear, no agitation, no excitement. He was perfectly calm and collected. With his faculty for quick mental combinations, he recognized the jaws of the trap which held him. He was evidently a philosopher of the school of fatalists.

"I am rather fond of my liberty," said Philip Coe, pushing about some bits of paper on the table with his long flexible fingers. 'You have taken possession of the fruits of my last speculation! My arrival, unfortunate as it has been to myself, clears your friends, and opens the way to your uttermost happiness. What do you propose to offer me in return for this?"

The hint at my happiness was an overwhelming appeal. On the threshold of the joyful future made possible by the happenings of this eventful night I shrank from being the cause of further sufferings to the principal agent in the new turn of affairs.

"Clear up the mystery connected with this robbery," I said, perfectly aware that I was compounding a felony, "and you shall depart as freely as you As to your friends over the way, I will tell them it was all a mistake."

came.

His explanation covered everything, even to the odd circumstance of leaving the valuable package for so long a time in the keeping of the authorities of the hotel. An officer of the law had been hot on his trail for another offence, and to elude pursuit he had dodged on board an outgoing steamer, carrying with him the receipt which I had been at so much pains to bring back for him.

After this statement had been written out by his own hand, I called in the waitress who had served us at dinner to witness the signature. The name attached to the document was Philip Coe, the same which had appeared in the paper I had dried out on the deck of the Camperdown, and which was written across the opening of the broken package in my safe.

One afternoon in the autumn, Miss Dangerking and I, with Camperdown in close attendance, were pacing slowly to and fro on the shady side of Lafayette Place over against the sombre front of the Astor Library, and along that colonnade of Corinthian columns of a departed glory, which she called a gallery, getting inexpressible comfort out of the fusted old street, and our undisturbed possession of it, and daring at last to look frankly into the clarified future. Our marriage was set for that day week.

"You have never cleared up the mystery of those wonderfully fresh violets," said Miss Dangerking, with an earnestness I was no longer capable of trifling with.

"I sent a conservatory on board in pots at Liverpool. I thought you might like them."

"I did like them," she said, after we had walked on to a little distance, raising her sympathetic eyes from the broken flagging through which a distorted root was struggling to force its way into the light. "I was thinking of a later evidence of your thoughtfulness. I am glad that our perfect happiness is not clouded by the sense of having consigned to prison the burglar who was instrumental in bringing it about."

VOL. XVI.-21

SEARS

I

Na little, low room of a farm-house, looking out toward the North Devon cliffs, half a mile away, lay a young city clerk, dying.

The room was poor, but light and clean, except for the discoloration of the winter's rain on the outer wall; it had no carpet, and all the furniture it contained was the green-painted iron bedstead, whereon the man lay, a rickety washstand, a Windsor chair, and an old milking-stool. The blue-gray walls were bare; there was no ornament in the room but a pot of wild flowers beside the worn bit of looking-glass on the mantel-board, and an arrangement of pink and green paper shavings in the fenderless fireplace needlessly asserting the summer-time; for through the window, widely opened outward, came the sunny warm air and honeysuckle scent of June. And all was so still and peaceful that the man could hear the sheep browsing in the meadow just below, until a yellow-hammer came and sat on the clothes-line near, to inform the farm that he wanted a little bit of bread, but no cheese, twice a minute; and a single wasp, tired of walking up the window-pane, set to work ferociously to bore it, though he had but to turn round to sail away free into the open.

The man was propped against a tiny pillow set up endways, and was smiling down at his shrunken hand, which lay on the patchwork quilt palm upward. He was languidly moving the tips of his fingers, and the gray kitten the farmer's little daughter had brought up with her to keep him company was making small pounces from behind a

ridge of the bedclothes to pat them with its pink-toed paws.

The slack slant of the arm, the loosefalling empty folds of the nightshirt about it, and the wasted figure propped there, told of utter weakness and weari ness; no need to look at the hand or up to the face, which seemed all eyes and cheek-bone. But the kitten found the hand fun enough, and the little girl laughed as she looked at the great smiling eyes, not noticing how wild the sharpened circle of the sockets made them, nor wondering why the mouth was always drooping open now.

They had had a busy afternoon.

For after the young doctor's visit late that morning the man had called for his desk, and the little girl had helped him to sort the papers there. They were few, but it had been a great effort just to see that they were all in order-the letter written to his cousin, the Birmingham bootmaker, to be posted as soon as necessary; the lifeinsurance policy for £300, taken out two years ago, when he had had his salary raised at the solicitor's office in King William Street and was beginning to see his way; the will, which the little girl herself had written out at his dictation in a gawky round hand a week ago, whereunder she was to take the sum of £21, to be placed in the postoffice savings' bank for her; a certain Miss Angela Jones was to receive the amount of the policy moneys, and the Birmingham bootmaker the rest of the little wisp of personalty, as executor and residuary legatee. A packet of the letters which had come for him every Saturday during his ten weeks' stay had

been read through, once more, one by one, and put back with a kiss, to be burnt by said executor; the money in the purse had been counted and voted sufficient. That was all. Then the little girl had brought the Greek Testament, the brown and red Cambridge Classics edition, in which Miss Angela Jones's love was inscribed to him, and had gone to fetch her kitten, that they might have a game till teatime.

She sat on the stool, with the book open on her knees, wondering how a man who could read these queerlooking words could be content to play with her kitten-a rosy-cheeked, dark-eyed child, with clean, brown hands, and the air of one to be relied upon in the years to come. She had taken quite a maternal interest in the illness that allowed her to be so valuable, and had learnt to love the man for liking to have her with him. She knew he was very ill, but, childlike, she was perhaps rather glad of it so long as it enabled her to be of service.

Presently a whistle sounded from below, and she caught up her kitten and vanished, returning again with a cup of warm milk and another of beeftea for alternative. She put them on the stool, and the basin on the bed, so that the man might combat the effects as comfortably as might be; and then left him with a gay promise of another visit before her bedtime.

The man was going to die very soon —of starvation. City life, desk toil under unhealthy conditions, disregard for his physical welfare in the endeavor to make the most of every spare moment, to gain knowledge and power, and above all to earn a wife, had overthrown him; his body had vainly endeavored to maintain itself under the stress, and after protesting for some years had at last taken to simply rejecting without further effort.

A terrible attack of liver pain had sent him into the country, with his firm's best wishes and a small gift to help spin out the money saved for other, brighter, purposes, till he could return strong again. That was early in April. For a week he had managed to walk about a little, had seen the cliffs and made friends of the farmer

and his little girl; and then, in confidence of power already returned, had strained it too early. Another attack had thereupon sent him to the greenpainted bedstead in the little room, to lie there weakening two months, and now to die.

The doctor could do nothing but come and see him; which he did willingly twice a week, though the farm was five miles away from all other claims upon him. He thought the man must be lonely and came as a friend, suggesting often that some relative should be asked to come and stay. The man thought over this; but he had few relatives or friends, and they were hard at work. Besides, what was to be gained by having them come to see him die? Through that pass he must fare alone. Why make it more lonely by presences which could only assert their own futility? He was glad it was summer-time, and he had his letter once a week.

Oh, that Saturday letter, signed Angela Jones! It came on Saturday regularly, but it was not opened till Sunday, in the meantime standing on the mantel-board beside the pot of flowers and the worn glass. For when he had been ordered away they had agreed that she should send him a letter to cheer him every Sunday morning. The Post-office, however, was not acquainted with this arrangement, and, as it was not in the habit of delivering letters on Sunday in that out-of-the-way part, they had been compelled to vary their original plan. So the letter was sent on the Friday evening, received on the Saturday morning, and opened on the Sunday. But this difficulty pleased the man, for by it a new delight was added, that of looking at the envelope all Saturday, as it stood on the mantelboard, and speculating over its contents. Yet as the evening closed in he found it hard to keep his promise not to open it before Sunday, and often he wondered "what if I should die tonight?" But when Sunday morning came, and he arose and opened his letter, reading it to the sound of happy waking birds, he was more than pleased; for no post could have been looked for at four in the morning, and

the holy light of dawn was altogether the fittest to read it by.

Those letters, and the looking for ward to them, enabled him to drag on from week to week. Of course they were love-letters-a little bit of news, about weekly drudgery mostly (for Angela Jones was a type-writer), mingled with a great deal of anxiety as to his condition, and any quantity of expressions of affection. Expressions of affection; but he read affection, and thought little of the expression. And it was well for him that he did so; for not even the intensest efforts of a young lady of Angela Jones's attainments could have hidden from a critical eye the fact that absence had made a difference. His was not the least critical; when he read of love and sympathy he believed what he read.

Now Angela Jones was doing her very best. She was a conscientious girl, and she could not help the difference. She had no power over love to command him hers forever and at all distances. She had loved the man truly. She would probably have continued to love him truly if he had not been obliged to leave her. And when her love faded she set to work to hide the fact, hoping that when he came back again it would all be as before. Meanwhile it was her duty, as it was her wish, to remain loyal to him in spite of a change of feeling she could not prevent.

But then his letters, the feeble fan to a dying fire, grew shorter and shorter; and at last came one written in a child's hand, and only signed by him. He excused himself in it, all too obviously, by saying that the child liked being useful to him, and had besought his permission to write for him by way of practice; Angela was not to take this as a sign of real weakness. Angela did, however, and saw that her lover was like to die, and to die deceived. And that tortured the poor girl, for she was honest in her self-consciousness. But she pretended to take the excuse, and praised the child's handwriting to him. She was almost pleased to find she could, by trying hard, resent having letters written by deputy sent to her. That meant that her love was not quite

dead. But the flicker went out in the flood of tears that came on considering its exact measure gauged thus. And though she grew to hate herself for her inconstancy and dishonest dealing toward a dying man, self-hatred was inadequate for the rekindling. Still the Saturday letter came week by week, and the expressions of affection were there, and he read them as uncritically as ever.

He hesitated for some time to tell her of his true state. She would realize it gradually, and better so. He had nearly offered to release her from her promise once, but that seemed needless anticipation. If his lingering on was to be indefinite, he would have done so; but it would have been merely unkind to offer a release so unnecessary. It would have seemed as if he was anxious to be rid of a debt he could not live to pay, almost as if he distrusted her devotion and power to love him to the last. And besides, he wanted to die loved this way. That was his one selfishness.

She had offered to come and be with him. But that, knowing how important to her was the keeping of her position, knowing, too, how changed he was, and fearing perhaps that there would be something for her to overcome in approaching him now, he had refused with the tenderest thanks. He wished to die with the memory of the love as it had been, to spare her and himself the agony of sorrow and pity such a meeting would bring into it.

To-day the friendly young doctor had acceded to his quiet, self-possessed inquiry, and had told him for certain what this great weakness and continual sleepiness meant in the way of distance, that a week, or it might be two, was all that was left. And now that he had set his affairs in order he was ready. The child's prattle for that space, and another letter, was all he really wanted.

Conscience did not trouble him for the neglect of his health. His was a simple nature. And it had seemed to him that a man of his class must either do as he had done with himself, make every effort for success and take the consequences his constitution might append, or else live on through years