"What trade?

"The diamond trade."

"Look here, will you please leave me alone?"

"Yes, believe I will, but not immediately."

"Yes you have. Now look here," he added, getting up and stepping between me and the door. I looked at him, hard, boringly. I waited for him to proceed. "I say that I have business with you and it concerns that diamond robbery. Keep your You've got those diamonds."

seat.

"Sir!" I shouted.

"You robbed that place, and you know that I know it. Come, confess."

"I'll cut your throat!" I exclaimed, springing to my feet.

"But I thought you said that you had no knife. You have deceived me. Come, own up."

"Get out of this room or I will hurt you, you impudent puppy."

He smiled, the same smile that had fallen upon my book.

"Mr. Vance, you have worried until excitement might be exceedingly dangerous to you. At this moment you are really under arrest. There are officers in the hall. I am simply giving you a chance to make matters easier for you. Confess, and I will get you off with as light a sentence as possible."

I had never before been placed in so trying a position. There stood an insane man with a pistol; I was unarmed. He had taken it into his head that I was a robber. "Call in your officers," I said, hoping to escape while he was gone after them. He stepped to the door, with his eyes still upon me, and called. A moment later three men entered my room. Surely they would save me. I hastily explained to them, but instead of taking the fellow away, one of them said that he hoped that I would come quietly. I knew that I could explain to the authorities, and rather than see the whole house stirred up, I consented to go. They took me to police headquarters, shut me in a room with that reporter, and—well, along toward morning I confessed that I was the robber, and now, in jail, I write this as a sort of confession. Suppose I did get the diamonds, and I did, I still think that a reporter should not bedraggle his-permit me to say-art.

WHEN WE HAVE WAITED*

BY VAUGHAN KESTER

H! I beg your pardon," some one said politely from before me in the darkness.

This I thought was remarkably handsome, as I must have all but knocked the speaker off his feet.

Then, in an instant, I was wondering who had spoken.

If it were Jackson he would have said-I knew, for I had heard him more than once on

occasions when I was endeavoring to mount the narrow stairs at the identical moment he was trying to descend them-" Get out of the way, you beast! What the devil do you mean by walking all over me?"

Therefore, being vastly amazed at the politeness emanating from the blackness in front of me, I involuntarily put up my hand to find the gas-jet-we were on the second-floor landingand having ascertained its exact position against the wall, I fumbled in my pocket for a match, and having found one lit the gas.

I was thus enabled to see who had ventured to introduce civility into the atmosphere of mild ruffianism that prevailed among the outcasts at Mrs. Tauton's.

Standing jammed rather close against the wall, where he had evidently considered it safe and expedient to withdraw in view of my hurried ascent of the steps, was a young man with a round, boyish face.

"I really beg your pardon," the stranger repeated; whereat so astonished at his continued politeness was I that, with the mistaken intention of turning on the gas still farther, I turned it out altogether, and we were a part of the surrounding gloom again. But in the momentary brightness lent by the flickering flame I saw Gavan for the first time.

* Written for Short Stories. Copyrighted.

Illustrations by H. Augusta Meday

From this not entirely favorable beginning there came about a speaking acquaintance that soon ripened into friendship.

Perhaps he regarded me as more highly civilized than certain other of his fellow lodgers.

I trust he did, though even at best I was anything but mannerly, for I felt myself an Ishmaelite debarred by penury from participation in social decencies of any sort.

I was a clerk in a down-town office, and had by a series of misfortunes gravitated from the outskirts of cheap respectability to the dingy apartments that Mrs. Tauton kept for the exclusive use of single gentlemen of uniformly large hopes and small means, and I took my meals-they had a marked tendency to cast a cloud over any sunniness of temper I might have originally pos

sessed with wretches of my kind at the same low-priced resort just around the corner.

Some of us will remember the dyspepsia, there acquired, in afteryears and in the midst of princely wealth, particularly young Tompkins, who ruined a fine constitution in a vain endeavor to subsist on a diet of pie interspersed with milk.

Tompkins subsequently made a million or two by a singularly soulless operation in railway shares. I have never blamed him for his consciousless greed, as I attribute it to the food, or substitute for food, his early poverty compelled him to employ in the effort to keep body and soul together.

I simply think he failed in his object.

As has been already told, it was on the steps at Mrs. Tauton's that I first met Gavan. It was not long until he gave me his complete confidence and I was permitted to know his aims and ambitions.

He desired to write plays and to dispose of those he had already written.

It became his custom to make nightly reports to me, when we would be alone in his room of an evening, giving me detailed accounts of his doings, and I came to know what actor or manager had promised to read his work.

He was very young, and his appearance so youthful it must have told against him. I think it prevented his being taken seriously.

When the people he wished to reach were kind and considerate, it was because they were amused and regarded the whole thing as a joke. I do not question but that it condemned him unheard in the minds of most.

In any event his plays were being returned to him with almost every mail, accompanied by letters more or less encouraging, as they reflected various degrees of kindliness on the writer's part.

I had not known him for many months before I was aware of a change. His face wore an anxious, troubled look, but he retained his cheerfulness, which was, however, more a habit than a condition of thought, I knew that he was wretchedly lonely and that disappointment came to end each hope he dared indulge in.

It was a mighty step from the sleepy little Southern town where he had lived, to New York, with its supreme indifference to so small a unit in the struggling mass.

With his grave, earnest eyes, which were almost pathetic in

their seriousness, and the face, that the days of waiting had stamped with lines-markings of the hand that was empty for him he was only one of many.

As he told me of his purpose and his ambition, so also in course of time he told me of his private affairs.

His mother was an invalid, his father had long been dead, and they were very poor. This bit of information he imparted with the utmost reluctance. I guessed at it without the telling, as no one, unless there was the grim incentive of pressing poverty, ever braved the terrors of life at Mrs. Tauton's.

Little by little he told me of his mother, and I saw that love for her was the one strong passion of his heart. She lived-none too happily-with relatives in the town that had been the home of his family for a great many generations.

He used to talk to me of her for hours at a stretch, and I never wearied listening. There was, I felt, a decided moral elevation to be derived from hearing him plan for her. He seldom or never spoke of what he would do for himself when he should achieve success; it was his mother who was to profit by it.

One night he came into my room and dropped dejectedly down on the edge of the bed, that answered all the purposes of a chair when not in actual use as a couch.

"Nothing much. Only I am thinking that my first year in New York is about at an end, and there is no gain of any sort to show for it. The whole thing has been miserably and unredeemedly discouraging."

"Why, Gavan, you are making important acquaintances all the time, who will aid you on to what you want."