realize the full difficulty of Miss Lila's desires. He thought, in a word, it would have been easier to provide for her pleasure the moon with a fence around it.

Meanwhile, Lila saw hope which she in company with many wiser mortals soon mistook for certainty. A miraculous way had opened out of all her difficulties.

"After that silly. Consul made me feel like an indigo plant, you can bet you were an inspiration," she told him frankly; "I only hope you don't think me the freshest thing out; but you see there was no other way."

As there was no time for Sir Archibald to slip a word in edgewise, he found his co-operation taken for granted. Aghast at the responsibility thrust upon him, and flying to delay, that refuge of the weak. he determined to think matters over and tell the bitter, disappointing truth to his unconventional, ungrammatical visitor later. A happy idea flashed through his mind. Under cover of a friendly meal he would break the news. The Baronet therefore invited "Momma" and Miss Wilson's captivating self to luncheon on the following day. Lila promptly accepted and went off, highly pleased with her afternoon's work, to tell her submissive parent the news.

"I guess his manners are dyed in the wool, anyway," she concluded, when describing Sir Archibald.

It is bad, very bad, for a man to work too many hours over Chinese, for if he overstudies, retribution is certain. came now to Sir Archibald. He had thoughtlessly wound his mental powers up tight as a spring-without calculating the recoil. Of course, the first dainty piece of femininity that roused his attention sharply from dazzling rows of characters had him at a distinct disadvantage. Before the close of the luncheon, Sir Archibald began to wonder, vaguelythough he still knew he was a foolwhether there might be a way to get Lila to the Audience.

She, on her part, asked no questions about the methods of introducing her to the charmed circle. The end amply justified the means. Besides, her entire attention was concentrated upon the choice of a gown for this unique function. Sir Archibald's taste was called into requisition. Did he like pink, or blue, or white? Really, Sir Archibald did not know what

he liked just then-blue, for eyes, he thought. At least, he approved of the blue ones opposite. She chatted and laughed and chaffed her way insiduously into the fascinated student's heart. When he left her with Momma late in the afternoon at the hotel, Sir Archibald began to imagine that if things progressed at their present pace he might need a Keeley cure for the Lila Wilson habit; for while he could get along after abstaining for a time, the moment he heard her light, high-pitched, tinkling voice, his heart rose and noisily demanded her. He regret fully admitted to himself that Chinese characters had broken down his defenses woefully.

All through a long afternoon, in an air like cool wine, they had explored the old city together. They had stood on the high "camel's-back" bridge, and watched the long lines of shaggy dromedaries, with their loads of coal for the mines in Mongolian deserts, toiling away into the eye of the sun. They had wandered down the narrow by-ways of Picture Lane, where musty masterpieces may still be occasionally picked up. occasionally picked up. He gloried in, and yet grudged every step. And all the while Hope whispered impossible plans for capturing the wonderful permission.

Alas, with the critical eye of morning the Baronet despaired again. A prettilyworded little note to Countess von Sutten, the wife of the German Minister, brought a reply which showed him the utter completeness of his surrender and the impossibility of his schemes. Poor Lila! He would rush off at once and put her definitely out of her suspense.

He hurried around to the hotel. Miss Wilson was just finishing breakfast. He dived boldly into the subject on his mind, but Lila apparently thought him lightheaded from hunger. As a matter of fact, he had forgotten all about the harmless. necessary meal. Therefore he accepted a cup of tea gratefully from the hands of his lady, who twittered about plans for the day. Where should they go, to the Temple of Heaven or the Temple of Confucius? It ended by their doing both in a pompous procession of four-bearer sedan chairs. Sir Archibald had obtained special permission for Lila to travel in a state not generally allowed except to Chinese officials and Europeans above the rank of Secretary of Legation. She was de

lighted with the novelty of it all, and sat absolutely content in the green cloth-covered box, munching "bong-bongs," provided by the thoughtfulness of Sir Archibald.

Pleasure had made him young again, as even Lila noticed. The fires of youth shivered in his eye, the illusions of youth sprang up in his heart. Sir Archibald was ready to do and dare for his lady, to play the role of a St. George or a Sir Launcelot; to go down with Daniel among the lions-anything. Yet he was not able to compass that poor little place for her at the Audience. He had given his word to try and try he did. In the interval between their excursions to the sights, he strenuously worked. Countess von Sutton was pestered. So were the other ladies, and likewise their husbands. He even besieged the Yamen, which is the board of foreign affairs. There he found. rather to his astonishment, that the Empress Dowager was not quite so anxious to see Lila as Lila was to see her. He, who for years had been an absentee from drawing rooms, frequented for a dizzy week, teas and other miscellaneous gatherings, wildly hoping that some charitable woman, in return for a delicately handed cream puff, would offer to take Lila into the Palace.

Moreover, he became so deeply in love as to be utterly unconscious of his own absurdity. The one time he had a dim glimpse of the figure he cut was when he shamefacedly confessed to Lila his lack of success.

But she was always kind to him, gracious, gentle, forgiving, and withal so confident that the wretched Charge d'Affaires felt spurred to redoubled effort.

"I just must give my love to Li Hung Chang," she said, laughing. Gently she intimated that she was willing to risk a one-card draw or the fate of a stowaway if only she might get into the fairy palace. Never a reproach fell on his overstrained ears. He was wrapped around in a delicious, soothing trust which shone out of her blue eyes, like a light from the open windows of heaven. And to think that failure would definitely shut him out of that heaven into the cold, hard world! His face became elongated even to melancholy. His brain worked overtime. Chinese characters, the enamored Baronet decided, were child's play to this.

The day before the Audience arrived. He had begged like a dog to no purpose. The quiver of his impracticable schemes lay empty. As he wandered down the Legation compound, the sight of the splendid sedan chairs for tomorrow's ceremony drawn up in a line, right under his very

With a most deceitful, airy calm, however, he turned into the house of Merton. the Chinese Secretary ("a very decent fellow," as Sir Archibald put it to himself) The Baronet was now at the point where it was either confide or burst. Merton, a grave young Britisher, served as a safety valve. Out rushed a flood of words, a full confession of ignominy, of underhand methods, of risks blithely and cheerfully taken. Finally, with the consummate cowardice of which only a man in love is capable, Sir Archibald blandly suggested that Merton should break the news to "her," unless, of course, he could find some way out of the difficulty.

Merton's discomfiture searched every corner of his face for a place of refuge from the determined Sir Archibald, but "Br-r-r-r" was all the Chinese Secretary said, thinking fiercely of the aberration of taste which had led his chief to become entangled with a person who probably talked through her nose his chief, whose descent could be traced down from William the Conqueror.

The two men sat opposite each other with faces like funeral mutes, Sir Archibald busily engaged with a spot he was rubbing on the table.

Presently Merton broke the silence. "I think," he said impressively, "there is one chance to set it all straight.'

"How?" gasped Sir Archibald, clutching, like a drowning man, at a straw.

"By Jove, Sir Archibald, marry the girl and send her in as the wife of the British Charge d'Affaires."

Merton, as his chief was aware, always went direct to the point but still his simple suggestion nearly knocked the Baronet off his feet. With the humility born of true love, he had not fully realized his deplorable condition before, and now, realizing, he despaired.

Yet, in spite of his feeble hopes, he rushed off to the hotel and in trembling accents put the proposition before Lila with profuse apologies for his age, and his preposterous stupidity at not having thought of such a simple means before.

.

NDIAN JOE shambled aimlessly along the unfriendly asphalt of Pioneer Square. There is nothing remarkably aristocratic about a Siwash, as he is today; his gait is awkward, his step uncouth, his legs misshapen, with great while he is of the noble red man's race, thick ankles, and broad, shuffling feet, for while he is of the noble red man's race, partly he seems to savor of the grease eating Eskimo. At once You may read in the black. beadlike eye the dormant savagery of his warrior cousins of the prairie, and the dull listlessness of the Northern tribes, blent, perhaps, with the stoicism of both. Once these Siwashes were fighters, but the day of blood is past, and they have sunk into almost universal lethargy. But Indian Joe was somewhat of an exception, with straight and well-knit limbs, and a face well-featured and unusually intelligent. His gait was a shambling one, it is true, but this was out of choice, rather than that compulsory degradation which fell upon his race with the coming of the white man. Indian Joe was strong, and quick, and supple, but he shambled, because ambition and energy were but insignificant factors in his life he had nothing to live for, except death. His life ran on as the lives of all his people had run, ever since Seattle and the Seattleites had claimed for their own the very shores and hills and forests, where many moons ago, his forefathers had dried their salmon, jerked their venison, held their potlatches, and smoked across their council-fires.

Even the purple waters of the Pacificpurple always, at twilight-on the inland seas of the North, even these, where used to sweep their thousand light canoes, were infested by strange craft that broke the ancient stillness of the Sound, harshly and irreverently, with the strident discord of the white man's whistles. But the ruthless sacrilege had gone even deeper than that the desecrating touch had been laid upon the wigwams of the dead, and even now, in front of Indian Joe, stood the To

tem Pole, pillaged from an Indian graveyard, and set up as a curiosity, a landmark, a boast, for men to look and laugh at. Implacable abuse! So thought the Siwashes, so thought Indian Joe, but the Totem Pole persisted, despite the wrath of the gods, and Indian Joe shambled on his way indifferently, past the little groups of Siwash women huddled along the pavements of the business streets, with their baskets and mattings and woven-grass work spread before them. Here and there sat aged squaws, and sometimes the old men, with wrinkled brows and wizened features, who had seen the early days of happiness and plenty, when their people bartered with the Russian traders from New Archangel and Kamchatka, bringing valued pelts in exchange for trinkets and commodities.

Mingling with these the survivors of a brighter but a vanished day-the younger women sometimes unconsciously provoked the purchase of their wares by the appeal that spoke from their dark, uplifted eyes, for many a tourist from the East had stopped to wonder if the features of an Indian girl were not attractive, after all, in their way.

Indian Joe smiled down to several of the women, as he passed, for if he was indifferent to the white race, he was always grateful of being popular with his own.

But in one of the groups, as he approached, he saw there was a stranger, and as he came closer, it seemed to him her hair and eyes were the blackest he had ever seen, and never were the coppered cheeks of an Indian maiden so touched with the colors of the sunset. But yet more beautiful were the childlike sweetness and wistfulness and innocence of her expression. He wondered, as he passed her, from whence she had come, and somehow he wished he might see her again, might even speak to her, perhaps, sometime.

Absent-mindedly he continued on his way down to the water, where a score of sharp-prowed canoes floated lightly on the tide, and a number of the Indians had gathered after selling their fish and clams.

Here, indeed, a transformation took

place, as the clumsy Siwashes stepped into the canoes, squatted down on their heels, and with a mighty impulse swept silently, gracefully, powerfully, out onto the sunset crimson of the Sound. Now the ungainly limbs were stowed away, altogether out of sight, and you forgot the shapelessness of the feet and ankles as the broad shoulders and supple wrists of the hurrying ones bent to the paddles like a swathe of grain before the blade.

But Indian Joe paddled slowly and abstractedly, for somehow he could not keep the Indian girl from his thoughts and his heart was troubled with vague questionings.

"She is beautiful," he said to himself. "She is like the poetry of my people, that is dead. Very long ago, wherever my people went, there was mystery and happiness. That day is gone, and the mystery is dead, but she has brought back the poetry of my people into my breast; for and her cheeks-ay, she has washed them in the setting sun, she has bathed in the waters of the sea, when they are crimson with the sunset."

Not for many moons had Indian Joe clutched at life as he clutched at it tonight; for at last he saw in it something to fight for, to cling to preciously; it seemed to him beautiful-to the extent

that this Indian girl was beautiful. As he felt these things in his breast, the twilight had come and gone, and the darkness, broken only by the stars, seemed to drift upon him out of the great, mysterious forest of firs that stretched inward from the shore, drifted out of the unseen depths, and crept across the waves, wrapping itself about his untutored Indian heart. Presently the canoe drew in, and grated over the white and yellow pebbles of the beach, where the rude habitations of a Siwash village lay scattered in disorder among the tide-land cedars; and with a new joy upon his face, Indian Joe went to his lodge, some distance from the others, and prepared his usual repast of salmon.

But the succeeding days were destined to bring with them an unlooked-for disappointment, for the Indian maiden did not come into Seattle with her baskets and her mattings, and Indian Joe was already beginning to dread the possibility of losing trace of her, when one evening, to his delight and relief, he found her, squatted on the pavement, with a wealth of trinkets about her, for disposal. He noted, too, as he passed her slowly, that her work was of the daintiest weaving, running in the patterns skilfully, with black and red and yellow grasses.