tenant and six rurales drew up before the plantation house bright and early the following morning; so bright and early that the committee was still abed, Jake and Hiram listened alone to the lieutenant's apologies. His depths of sorrow were really beyond plumbing, but complaints had been sworn to by witnesses to the peon's death! Self defence? The lieutenant did not doubt it! These volunteer Zacetacas were malicious as stupid! A statement to the Jefe would doubtless be sufficient.

"Better go quietly," Jake counseled. "The old chap just wants to make sure of his rake-off. We can be back before the fellows are up."

An hour's ride carried them into court which had convened under the palm in the patio. Suave, polite, the Jefe outclassed the lieutenant in length and breadth of apology, but he looked pained when Hiram repeated his plea of self-defence under assault of a lethal weapon. He was sorry, his sight attested to it, but -under the Mexican statute the machete was classified as an agricultural implement used in the cutting of cane and corn, and therefore was not a lethal weapon! He was obliged to commit Don Hiram to carcel, incommunicado! While pronouncing which doom his eye turned with such eloquent speculation upon Jake as to cause a shiver to run down his spine.

"This is a case for the consul," he whispered to Hiram. "I'm going now to get a telegram off to Jordan at Coatzacoalcos."

His expression as he moved doorward approximated that of a boy who has a sack of apples on the safe side of an orchard wall, and so Hiram seemed to interpret it. He even looked relieved when the Jefe gently called, "And you, also, Don Jacob! It ees the ridiculous, yes, and I am the much grieved. But the evidence ees that you are accessory to the fact."

"But be of comfort," he assured them when safely bestowed in carcel. "For I also am of the Company and shall entertain Senores, the Grangers, in your place. Think of it! had they fallen to the Senor Gibson ?"

The carcel, a one-roomed adobe, differentiated from the Jefe's mansion only by the superior ferocity of its fleas, caused Hiram to hark back to that first day, a

memory rendered the more painful by the absence of beer.

Reclining on one arm upon the plank catre, he looked across at Jake. "Your 'mutton' has turned out the liveliest kind of goat. What's his game?" "Search me." Jake's answer emerged from sepulchural gloom.

They learned when, next morning, Carmelita handed chocolate, tortillas, flowers, and regrets for the Jefe's personal absence, between the window bars, the Jefe would have "mucho gusto" greatly loved to receive their congratulations himself, but as business prevented, Carmelita was charged to say that his amigos' felicitations on the sale of his plantation to the Senores, the Grangers, would cause in his cup of joy to overflow.

Not understanding English, Carmeilta missed the strongest felicitations, and by the time Hiram's happiness permitted him to express himself in the liquid Spanish tongue, he had risen to its courteous traditions. He made prostrations in the shadow of the Jefe's greatness.

"And I mean it," he said after Carmelita had removed her oscillations along with the empty dishes. "He's the tallest man of my acquaintance."

Jake, however, was not so appreciative; disgust distorted his view. "Fifteen hundred a piece to the bad!" he groaned.

"Oh, well!" puffing philosophically at the cigarette he had borrowed from Carmelita, Hiram proceeded to extract comfort from the situation. "Oh, well, we have a couple of thousand left. With them we can-"

"Rotten Mexican pesos at two-fourteen exchange!" Jake refused comfort. "Better be thankful they are safe in bank. Now, if we had 'em here?” Jake shuddered.

"As it is," went on the comforter, "we only have to play poor awhile; refuse to shell out a bean for grub. The Jefe'll soon tire of boarding us. But-"

Two days later, Carmelita passed Hiram's check book, pens, ink, and a note from the Jefe through the bars. "Amigos of his soul!" If they could oblige with a small loan of one hundred pesos to meet a pressing bill he was "their's eternally!"

"We'll see him in-" Jake began, but the locality he mentioned loses so much by comparison with the heat, flies, cock

roaches and scorpions of that Chiapas jail, it were better omitted. Sufficient that the expression carried strong negation.

Carmelita, good girl, was equal to the emergency. Beckoning them to the bars, she indicated six Mississippi grangers, of an average weight of one hundred and ninety pounds, who had just returned. from a visit to Esperanza. And when the pair had noted a new manila rope, Carmelita remarked with simple naivete.

"The Jefe says he will let you out." The Senores obliged-a hundred that morning, two the next, three the third,

and so on in arithmetical progression, obliged, obliged, obliged unto the last of the conductors' pesos. Whereupon, having made sure of the fact by careful reference to the company's bank book, the Jefe let them out, by night, from his bailiwick.

"And I mean to say," Hiram remarked in the cattle car that bore away their broken fortunes, "that for his opportunities the Jefe towers above Popocatapetl. Born under the lucky stars of our own virtuous banner, he would have skinned the Goulds, Vanderbilts and have made Rockefeller look like a Standard dip."

I.

II.

E raised his hat gravely to the girl standing in the doorway and turned. to go down the long flight of steps. Midway he turned again

and looked back at her. She was still standing there, unmoved, calm, with no hint of the passions that shook him, her face placid in the light from the overhanging lamp, her petite figure clear-cut against the yellow illumination of the room behind her. It seemed incredible to him that the storm that was beating his soul to tatters should have no effect upon her, that she should still look as she had looked day after day, month after month, during all the years that he had known and loved her. She might have been bidding him good-night, to see him. again the next day, as she had done so many times before. Could she understand that this was the end of the play, that the last act was over, the curtain falling? Her look gave no sign of the unusual.

"Good-night," he said, and her voice, clear, sweet, calm, unbroken by any trace of emotion, seemed to his turbulent imagination like a bell sounding through the rack of a violent storm, like the clear note of a piccolo in the crash of an orchestral finale.

"Good-night," he replied, and was surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. It hardly seemed to belong to him. He would not have been surprised had he uttered a moan instead; yet he repeated slowly, gravely, "goodnight." And again he raised his hat, steadily, tenderly, as if the act were part of a ritual, something sacred, an expression of love, of tenderness, of sorrow, of infinite pain. The girl drew back, the door closed, the light vanished. He turned again and went slowly down the rest of the steps.

At the bottom he stopped and rolled a cigarette, carefully, as if it were a delicate operation. Then he looked at it. curiously, as if in wonder as to where

he got it. He held it in his fingers a moment without lighting it, then threw it away. Uncertainly, as if bewildered, he walked to the corner and stopped, looking back. He saw the Other Man approach and run rapidly up the stone steps; the door opened again and the man went in.

The

A curious sense of weakness, of illtreatment, overwhelmed the watcher, succeeded by a blind rage. So this was the end. All the years of patient love and devotion were gone for nothing. best that was in him had been hers without reserve. He had given her every-. thing, had been everything to her. Every act of his life for three years had been directly or indirectly influenced by her. His ambitions had been higher, his ideals truer, his thoughts better, purer, because of her. The work he had done had been inspired by The Girl, and he had done better work than ever before. He knew it.

God, how he had loved her-still loved. her! She had been his whole world, his life, all he lived and hoped for. And now his world had fallen away from him and he was left without foundation, without purpose or hope.

The savage mood slipped away from him and his thoughts went back to the time when he had first told her he loved her. He saw it all again as clearly as on that day-the smoothly gliding stream with the shadows of passing clouds darkening its surface here and there, and the little shaded nook on its bank where he had sat with her that summer afternoon. She nestled there comfortably, little flickering lights and shadows playing over her face. A chickadee alighted on a limb near her, cocking its pert head comically to see her, and she whistled to it merrily. Then dreamily her gaze sought the distant hills, blue and purple in the evening light, their solemn mystery communicating a touch of gravity to her mobile face.

"I wonder," she said, "what lies out there, in the world that is beyond those mountains. I have always lived here,

She

And the man lying at her feet had looked at her half amused, very tenderly, knowing how little she understood of life. and its burdens and struggles, its consuming passions and heart-aches. was so small, so soft and tender and young-and so altogether adorable. Swiftly he had gathered her in his arms and kissed her but half-resisting lips and cried. "Girl, girl, I love you, I love you! Come with me out into this world that you dream of, that you know so little about. We will do our work together. And my work shall be to love you, love you, do for you, protect you and make you the happiest woman in all the world."

And she had turned her face up to him, gravely, tenderly, with a trace of tears in her eyes. "Will you, laddie? Do you really want me? Then you shall take me some day. But not now, not for a while. I must study and work by myself for a while yet. I am not ready to give up all my dreams now, to abandone my ambitions. I want to do work for myself first, to prove to myself that I really can do it. And you, too, must work, must prove yourself that you are not merely a dreamer but a man who can do his share in the world, who can make a name and a place for himself."

And he had kissed her again, all the love that thrilled him in his eyes, burning on his lips, choking the words in his throat.

So it had been arranged. And he had come to this city to do that which he had promised her he would do. And later she had followed, to study and work for herself. The year had been to him a dream, almost too sweet to be real. They had been more than lovers. The sense of comradeship between them had been as much to him as the knowledge that she loved him. They had been together most of their spare time, wandering about the odd nooks of the city, visiting places that other people knew nothing of, eating in little restaurants that they had "dis

covered," haunting the Latin Quarter or wandering along the wharves to gaze at the tall-masted ships, breathing the freshness of the sea and catching momentary glimpses of that great outer world that they were some day to visit together, when their plans had all worked out right.

And then had come the Other Manand the awakening. He had not known of it until tonight. She had dreaded to tell him, hated to hurt him, and he, in his blind love, had never suspected. He had failed to see the change in her, her embarrassment at times, her odd silences, her avoidance of being much alone with him.

Tonight she had told him. He had listened, white-faced. And now, he was out on the street, he did not know where, for he had been walking blindly, rapidly. Black rage swept over him again. "What was the faith of woman? A shadow, a gossamer web torn by the breeze-stable as the fog swept in by the wind of the sea. What did she know of love?"

His rage died again, to be superseded by black despair.

And then came the thought of the Other Woman. A strong wind drove down the street and whirled the thick fog into his face. He looked about him and saw that he stood at her door, the door of this other woman. He had not stood there for many a day. His love for the One Girl had been so all-absorbing that he had had no thought of others. But he remembered how she had looked the last time he saw her-tall, graceful, at once commanding and yielding; with lips that pouted and demanded to be kissed; eyes dark, burning, grave with the ever unsolvable mystery of womanhood, merry at times with laughter, tender, enticing.

He knew her story. It was not a nice one the old story. He had heard so many like it in his lifetime. But he knew that she had been more sinned against than sinning. The child had died. He had found her when she was wretched, dispairing, hungry, ready to end it all and in one swift moment pay the penalty that all must pay who break the law that society sets as a safeguard for itself. He had taken her, wandering homeless on the street one night, and had

found a place for her, had cared for her during her long sickness, and later had discovered and developed the talent that was in her. And now she was successful. Men admired her and her work women drew aside their skirts when she passed.

And she loved him. He knew it, for she was not of those who have learned to disguise their feelings, to appear careless when their emotions are strongest. He had asked for nothing, though he knew he had but to ask. And for that she loved him the more.

And now he stood at her door, hesitating.

"Why not enter and find here the love that was denied him elsewhere?" He had lived a clean life before. His code had been to treat every man honorably, and to do wrong by no woman. He might not marry this woman. There were in

surmountable obstacles. Nor did he want to marry her. And it was not necessary. She loved him, that was enough for her. And he wanted to be loved, to be petted, to feel a woman's arm about his neck, her hand on his hair.

But his code of life, the habits of years, denied him the right. His mother's face appeared before him-and the face of the girl he loved. Wearily he started to turn away. The door opened and silouetted against the light that shone out into the fog of the night stood the women. Her arms were stretched out to him as he looked up at her-tall, graceful, at once commanding and yielding; with lips that pouted and demanded to be kissed; eyes dark, burning, grave with the ever unsolvable mystery of womanhood, tender, enticing.

He went to her, and the door closed behind them.