Travelers Five
Along Life's Highway

Works of
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON

————————
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.

Travelers Five
Along Life's Highway
Jimmy, Gideon Wiggan, The Clown,
Wexley Snathers, Bap. Sloan

BY
Annie Fellows Johnston
Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Asa Holmes,"
"Joel: A Boy of Galilee," etc.
With a Foreword by
Bliss Carman

Frontispiece in full colour from a painting by
Edmund H. Garrett

L. C. Page & Company
Boston

Mdccccxi

Copyright, 1901, 1904, by
The Shortstory Publishing Company
Copyright, 1899, by
The S. S. McClure Co.
Copyright, 1903, by
The Century Co.
Copyright, 1911, by
L. C. Page & Company
(incorporated)
All rights reserved
First impression, October, 1911
Electrotyped and Printed by
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston. U. S. A.

Foreword

Of all the elements that go to make up a good story,—plot, verisimilitude, happy incident, local colour, excellent style,—none perhaps is more important than the touch of understanding sympathy. The writer must not only see his characters clearly and draw them with a masterly hand; he must have the largeness of heart that can share in all the turbulent experience of the human spirit. His people must be set against the vast shifting background of destiny. He must show their dramatic relations, one to another, and the influence of life upon life; he must also show their profounder, more moving and mysterious, relations to fate and time and the infinite things.

The writer of fiction creates for us a mimic country, peoples it with creatures of the fancy, like ourselves and yet different, and asks us to stray for our entertainment through that new kingdom. The scenes may be as strange or as familiar as you please; the characters as commonplace or as exceptional as you will; yet they must always be within the range of our sympathy. The incidents must be such as we ourselves could pass through; the people must be such as we can understand. They may well be exceptional, for that enlists our interest and enlivens our curiosity; they must not be beyond our comprehension nor outside our spiritual pale, for then we could have no sympathy with them, and our hearts would only grow cold as we read.

And what is at the base of our sympathy and interest? Nothing but our common life. They, too,—all the glad or sorrowing children of imaginative literature from Helen of Troy to Helena Richie—are travelers like ourselves on the great highway. We know well how difficult a road it is, how rough, how steep, how dangerous, how boggy, how lined with pitfalls, how bordered with gardens of deadly delights, how beset by bandits, how noisy with fakirs, how overhung with poisonous fruit and swept by devastating storms. We know also what stretches of happiness are there, what days of friendship, what hours of love, what sane enjoyment, what rapturous content.

How should we not, then, be interested in all that goes by upon that great road? We like to sit at our comfortable windows, when the fire is alight or the summer air is soft, and "watch the pass," as they say in Nantucket,—what our neighbours are about, and what strangers are in town. If we live in a small community, there is the monotony of our daily routine to be relieved. When an unknown figure passes down the street, we may enjoy the harmless excitement of novelty and taste something of the keen savour of adventure. If we are dwellers in a great city, where every passer is unknown, there is still the discoverer's zest in larger measure; every moment is great with possibility; every face in the throng holds its secret; every figure is eloquent of human drama. The pageant is endless, its story never finished. Who, indeed, could not be spellbound, beholding that countless changing tatterdemalion caravan go by? Yet all we may hope for of the inner history of these journeying beings, so humanly amazing, so significant, and all moved like ourselves by springs of joy and fear, hope and discouragement, is a glimpse here and there, a life-story revealed in a single gesture, a tragic history betrayed in the tone of a voice or the lifting of a hand, or perhaps a heaven of gladness in a glancing smile. For the most part their orbits are as aloof from us as the courses of the stars, potent and mystic manifestations of the divine, glowing puppets of the eternal masked in a veil of flesh.

This was the pomp of history which held the mind of Shakespeare, of Dickens, of Cervantes, of Balzac, in thrall, and drew the inquiring eye of Browning and Whitman, of Stevenson and Borrow, with so charmed and comprehending a look. To understand and set down faithfully some small portion of the tale of this ever changing procession, which is for ever appearing over the sunrise hills of to-morrow and passing into the twilight valleys of yesterday, is the engrossing task of the novelist and the teller of tales.

How well that task is accomplished, is the measure of the story-teller's power. He may pick his characters from homely types that we know, and please us with the familiar; or he may paint for us some portion of the great pageant that has never passed our door, and raise us with the mystery of unaccustomed things. In either case he will touch our hearts by revealing the hidden springs of action in his chosen men and women. He will enlarge the borders of our mental vision and illumine our appreciation by his greater insight, greater knowledge, finer reasoning. In his magic mirror we shall not only see more of life than we saw before, but we shall see it more clearly, more penetratingly, more wonderfully. And ever afterwards, as we look on the world we know, life which perhaps used to seem to us so commonplace, and events which used to seem such a matter of course, will take on a significance, a dignity, a glamour, which they never before possessed,—or, to speak more truly, which they always possessed, indeed, but which we had not the power to see. This is the great educative use of creative literature; it teaches us to look on the world with more understanding, to confront it in manlier fashion, to appreciate the priceless gift of life more widely and generously, and so to live more fully and efficiently and happily.

The great opportunity of literature, then, and its great responsibility, are evident. As Matthew Arnold put it, "The future of poetry is immense." In an age when men and women are coming more and more to do their own thinking and form their own ethical judgments, the power and moral obligation of letters must tend to increase rather than to diminish. It is an encouraging sign of the times and of growing intelligence, that we demand a greater veracity in our stories, and like writers who find significance and charm in common surroundings. Our genuine appreciation has produced a very real national literature, great in amount and often reaching true eminence and distinction in quality. Books like Miss Alice Brown's "Meadow Grass" and "Country Neighbours" are at once truly native and full of the dignity and poetry and humour of life. At their best they reveal depths of human feeling and experience with a telling insight and sympathy, and with a felicity of style, which belong only to masterpieces of fiction.

To this charming province in the wide domain of letters "Travelers Five" belongs, and Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston's many admirers must congratulate themselves on its appearance, as they stir the fire of an autumn afternoon. Here once more we may sit as at a pleasant window and "watch the pass" on the great highway. Here you shall see approaching, in that delightful and motley cavalcade, Irish Jimmy in his ranchman's dress, his warm Celtic heart urging him on up the obscure trail of unselfish good; here, grotesque old Gid Wiggan, flouting the shows of fashion, yet himself a showman conspicuous in the greater show of life; here, the old story, a fine gentleman's sense and feeling masquerading under the antics of a traveling clown; next, an embarrassed villager with something like greatness thrust upon him; and last, another strange example of silent persistent New England idealism, too proud to confess itself and only reaching its goal through a lifetime of repression and apparent failure.

But I am obstructing your view while I prate! Forgive me. I will step aside and let you have the window to yourself, so that you may quietly observe these Travelers going by.

New Canaan, Conn.,
26 September, 1911.

Contents

The First Traveler

Jimmy
On The Trail of the Wise Men

ORDINARILY a fleck of cigar ashes in the pot of mashed potatoes would not have caused a row in the ranch kitchen, but to-day old Jimmy had had a sup too much. At such times the mere sight of Matsu, the Japanese cook, could provoke him to oaths, and it was Matsu who had unwittingly dropped the ashes into the pot, as he laid his cigar stump on the shelf above the stove, preparatory to dishing up dinner.

Time was when Jimmy had been the cook at Welsh's ranch, and had had it all his own way in the greasy adobe kitchen. But that was before Ben Welsh's last round-up. Since then his widow had been obliged to turn part of the cattle-ranch into a boarding camp for invalids; the part that lay in a narrow strip along the desert. Health-seekers paid better than cattle or alfalfa she found.

Many things came in with the new administration. Matsu was one of them, in his white chef's cap and jacket. The spotless linen was a delight to the boarders, but to Jimmy, deposed to the rank of hewer of wood and drawer of water, it was the badge of the usurper. Naturally enough his jealousy took the form of making Matsu live up to his linen, and he watched him like a cat for the slightest lapse from cleanliness.

This constant warfare with Matsu was one of the few diversions the camp afforded, and every man made much of it. Had he been let alone, old Jimmy would have accepted the situation as merely one more ill-turn of Fate, which had left him as usual at the bottom of the wheel. But his futile resentment was too funny a thing for his tormentors to allow to die out.

It was a remark made early that morning which set him to brooding over his wrongs, and finally led to the sup too much which precipitated the fight over the potato-pot. Batty Carson made it, in a hoarse whisper, all the voice left to him since the grippe sent him West in his senior year. (He had been the best tenor in his college glee-club.) Jimmy was moving a table into the shadow of the tents, in order that the daily game of poker might begin. Poker was all there was in that God-forsaken desert to save a man's reason, Batty declared, so they played it from breakfast till bed-time. As the usual group joined him around the table, he opened a new deck of cards and began shuffling it. Automatically he found the joker and flipped it out of the pack. It fell face up on the dry Bermuda grass and old Jimmy stooped to pick it up.

Batty stopped him with a laugh. "A seasoned old poker player like you stooping to pick up the joker!" he teased. "You know well enough only one game goes on this ranch, and the joker's no good in that." Then he winked at the others.

"That's what you'll be after awhile, Jimmy, if you don't stand up for your rights better than you are doing. Matsu will be taking every trick in the game, and you'll count for nothing more than just the joker of the pack."

Jimmy flared up with an indignant oath at the laugh which followed, tore the card in two, and would have gone off muttering vengeance on Batty himself, had not the young fellow stopped him and teased him back into good humour. But the remark rankled afterward because there was such a large element of truth in it. Jimmy was no fool even if he was slow-witted. He knew as well as any one else that he had never counted for much in any game Life had ever given him a hand in. He brooded over the fact until some sort of solace was necessary. After that he burned for an occasion to assert himself. It came when Mrs. Welsh called to him to fill the wood-box. Just as he threw down his first armful of mesquite, the accident befell the potatoes, and he waited to see what Matsu would do.

What could Matsu do with sixteen hungry men listening for the dinner bell, but scoop out a big spoonful from the side of the pot where the ashes had fallen, toss it out of the window and heap the rest of the white fluffy mass into the hot dish awaiting it? Jimmy would have done the same in his day but now he thundered, "Throw out the whole potful, you pig of a heathen! Do you want to drive away every boarder on the ranch with your dirty tricks? Throw it out, I say."

With the good-nature that rarely failed him, Matsu only shrugged his shoulders, giggled his habitual giggle and proceeded, unmoved by threats.

"Go get 'notha drink," he advised, as Jimmy continued to glare at him. "Make you have heap much betta feeling. Not so big mad. Go get full."

Dinner was twenty minutes late that day. The boarders heard the reason from Hillis, who came in in his shirt sleeves to wait on the table, in place of Mrs. Welsh. Hillis was the dish-washer, a tall big-fisted lumberman from Maine, who, stranded at the close of an ill-starred prospecting tour, had taken temporary service in Mrs. Welsh's kitchen. He talked cheerfully of the disturbance as he clumped around the table, thrusting the dishes at each boarder in turn. They forgave his awkwardness in their interest in the fight.

"Jimmy began it," he told them. "Swung on to the pot and tried to pull it away from Jappy and throw out the stuff himself. But Jappy wouldn't have it, and batted him one on the head with the potato masher. Then Jimmy went in for blood, and grabbed the meat-knife, and would have put it into him in a pair of seconds if I hadn't tripped him up and sat on him. There was a hot time in there for a spell, the air was blue. Old Jimmy cussin' for all he was worth in the sand-flapper lingo, and Matsu going him one better every time in his pigeon English!"

"I suppose they'll both throw up their jobs now," remarked a dyspeptic looking man near the foot of the table. "I thought it was too good to last, and this God-forsaken Arizona desert can't hold more than one chef like Matsu. He's the perfection of his kind. I'd feel like hitting the trail myself if he should go."

"That's what Mrs. Welsh is afraid of," replied Hillis. "She's out there now trying to patch up the peace with him and coax him to stay. She told me not to tell you about the potatoes—thought it might turn some of you against your victuals; but it's too blamed funny to keep."

"For my part I hope she'll patch up the peace with Jimmy, too," said Batty Carson in his hoarse whisper. "He's the only amusing thing in all this howling wilderness. His being so far off the track himself makes it all the funnier when he goes to playing human guidepost for everybody else."

"He'll get his neck wrung a-doing it sometime," rejoined Hillis. "I told him so when he came fussing around at first, sticking his fingers in my dish-water to see if it was hot enough to kill germs. I told him I'd scald him instead of the dishes if he didn't let me alone. But it's just his way I suppose. He's been here off and on ever since Welsh bought the ranch."

"It's off this time," came Batty's croaking whisper. "There he goes now. Whew! He's hot! Just watch him hump himself along!"

The eight men whose backs were toward the window, turned in their chairs to follow the gaze of the others. They had a glimpse of a tall spare figure, hurrying stiffly past the house as fast as his rheumatic joints would allow. There was anger in every line of it. Even the red bandana around his throat seemed to express it. The fierce curves of his old hat-brim, the bristling hairs of his grizzly mustache, the snap of his lean jaws as the few snags left in his sunken gums opened and shut on a quid of tobacco, all told of an inward rage which would be long in cooling.

"Well, it's all over now," announced Hillis a moment later, coming back from the kitchen with a bowl of hot gravy. "Jimmy vowed one of them had to go, so Mrs. Welsh said he'd have to be that one. She could get a Mexican to chop wood and carry water, but she couldn't get another cook like Matsu. And Jimmy's that mad and insulted and hurt he can't get off the place fast enough. He's gone now to pack his kit, muttering as if he'd swallowed a lot of distant thunder."

A laugh went around the long table. Usually the meals proceeded in silence except for a few spasmodic outbursts. Sitting all day in the sun, gazing at the monotonous desert landscape while one waits for winter to crawl by, is not a conversational stimulant. But to-day, even Maidlow, the grumpiest invalid in the lot, forgot his temperature and himself in adding his mite to the fund of anecdotes passing around the table about Jimmy. The conversation was less restrained than usual in the absence of the only lady and child which the ranch boasted. The Courtlands were spending the day in Ph[oe]nix, so there were three vacant chairs at the foot of the table. One was a child's high-chair with a bib hanging over its back. Hillis laid his hand on it in passing.

"Here's one that will miss the old rain-crow," he said, as if glad to find some good word about Jimmy. "Little Buddy Courtland comes about as near loving him as anybody could, I guess. He'll miss him."

"It's Dane Ward who'll really miss him," declared the dyspeptic, glancing out of the window at the farthest row of tents to the one at the end whose screen door was closed. "Now Jimmy's gone I don't see what that poor fellow will do when he needs some one to sit up with him of nights."

"That's right," agreed Batty Carson. "Jimmy's been his right bower ever since he came. I'll give the old devil credit for that much."

While they talked, Jimmy, outside in the shack which he shared with Hillis, was gathering up in a furious rage his small bundle of belongings, cursing darkly as he threw boots, shirts and overalls into a confused heap in the middle of his bunk. Near at hand the tents stood empty in the December sun; five rows of them, four in a row with twenty foot spaces between. Each canvas-covered screen door swung open, and outside sat a camp chair or a big wooden rocker, with blanket or overcoat trailing across it, just as its occupant had left it to go in to dinner. A litter of newspapers and magazines lay all around on the dry Bermuda grass.

There was one exception. One screen door was closed, that of the farthest tent on the back row in line with Jimmy's shack. A sound of coughing—choked, convulsive coughing, had been coming from that direction for several minutes, but the sound did not penetrate Jimmy's consciousness until he heard his name called in an agonized tone. He craned his head out to listen. The call came again in a frantic gasp:

"Jimmy! Jimmy! Oh, somebody come!"

Then he recognized the voice. It was Dane Ward calling him. In his row with Matsu he had forgotten the boy; forgotten that he was to carry him his dinner and give him his medicine. He remembered with a pang of self-reproach that he had promised to come back with fresh wood as soon as he had carried an armful of wood to the kitchen. He started off on a stiff jog-trot towards the tent.

A moment later, maybe not even so long as that, for as he ran he knew that he might be racing against death, he dashed into the kitchen which he had sworn never again to enter, and caught up a handful of salt. Hillis, thinking he had lost his mind, almost dropped the tray of dessert dishes he was holding for Matsu to fill; but Mrs. Welsh recognizing the import of Jimmy's act, followed without question as he called back over his shoulder, "It's Dane! The worst hemorrhage the lad's had yet."

Hillis carried the news into the dining room with the dessert. Big and strong, never having had a sick day in his life, he could not know the effect it would produce, and Mrs. Welsh had not thought to warn him. The room grew silent. It was what might happen to any one of them; had happened in fact to all. The apprehension of it was the skeleton at their every feast. First one man and then another pushed back his plate and went out into the sunshine. They all liked Dane, the shy, quiet boy from some village in the New York hills. That was all they knew of him, for he always sat apart. Sometimes there was a book in his lap but he rarely read—just sat and gazed off towards the east with a hungry look in his big grey eyes. The homesick longing of them was heart-breaking to see.

They went back to their chairs and their naps and their newspapers, but the usual afternoon monotony was broken by the interest centering in the farthest tent in the last row. They glanced up furtively every time the door opened. It swung many times in the course of the afternoon, for Mrs. Welsh to go in and out, for the doctor to make a hurried visit, for Jimmy to come and go with crushed ice and clean towels, a spoon or a pitcher of fresh water.

For Jimmy, in his anxious ministrations, forgot his fight with Matsu, forgot that he had had no dinner, and that he was in the midst of preparations for leaving the ranch. The ugly facts did not come back to him till several hours had passed. Then he started up from the chair beside Dane's bed and tip-toed heavily across the floor. He would finish making up his bundle while the boy was asleep. The danger was past now. If he could get down to the Tempe road before dark, probably he could catch a ride the rest of the way into Ph[oe]nix. A board creaked and Dane opened his eyes.

"I wasn't asleep," he said weakly. "Hand me that little picture off the bureau, won't you, Jimmy?" Then as his fingers closed over it—"And roll the canvas to the top of the door please. I can't see."

Jimmy sat down again, impelled by the pitifulness of the thin white face. He knew the picture, having examined it privately on several occasions while sweeping the tent. It was a tin-type of two laughing school-girls, with their arms around each other. It was plain to him that one was Dane's sister. He guessed the relationship of the other when he saw that it was on the face unlike his that Dane's wistful eyes rested longest. Presently he slipped it under his pillow and lay so still that Jimmy thought he was asleep, until he saw a tear slipping slowly from under the closed eye-lids. Involuntarily the rough hand went out and closed in a sympathetic grasp over the white fingers on the coverlet. Dane bit his lip to hide their twitching and then broke out bitterly, but in a voice so weak that it came in gasps:

"That doctor back home lied to me! He lied! He knew that I was past saving when he sent me out here. He ought to have told me. Do you suppose I'd have let my mother mortgage her home—all she had in the world—to send me, if he hadn't led us to believe that the Arizona climate could work a miracle? He made it so certain that I'd get well right away, it seemed suicidal not to take the chance."

He stopped, almost strangled by a paroxysm of coughing, lay panting for a moment, and then began again, despite Jimmy's warning that it would make him worse to talk.

"Mother can never pay out without my help, and I've got to lie here to the end and think of what's in store for her and Sis, and then—die and be buried out here in this awful desert! It'll cost too much to be sent back home. Oh, how could a man lie like that to a person that's dying?"

The question staggered Jimmy a moment. He turned his eyes uneasily from Dane's piercing gaze in order that he might lie cheerfully himself.

"What are you thinking about dying for?" he demanded in his bluff way. "You'll be better than ever after this spell. It sort of cleaned out your pipes you know. You'll be busting bronchos with the best of them by spring if you keep up your courage. Look at Mr. Courtland now. He was worse off than you when he came, a heap sight. Had to be brought on a stretcher. He's getting well."

"No, it's different—everyway," answered Dane wearily. "He's got his family with him, and money and—everything. I haven't even my mother's picture. She never had any taken. If I had even that when the end comes it wouldn't seem quite so lonesome. But to think of all strange faces, and afterwards—to lie among strangers hundreds of miles away from home—oh, it nearly makes me crazy to think of the miles and miles of cactus and sand between us! I hate the sight of this awful country."

Jimmy looked out through the open door of the tent, across the dreary waste of desert, separated from the camp by only the irrigating ditch, and the unfrequented highroad, as if he were seeing it in a new light.

"'Spect it might strike a fellow as sort of the end of nowhere the first time he sees it," he admitted. "I've lived here so long I kind of like it myself. But I know what you're craving to see. I lived back in the hills myself when I was a kid. I was brought up in York state."

Dane raised himself on his elbow, an excited flush on his face. "You, from home," he began. "New York—"

Jimmy pushed him back. "You're getting too frisky," he admonished. "You'll be took again if you ain't careful. Yes, I know just what you're pining for. You want to see the hills all red with squaw berries or pink in arbutus time; and the mountain brooks—nothing like these muddy old irrigating ditches—so clear you can see the pebbles in the bottom, and the trout flipping back and forth so fast you can hardly see their speckles. But Lord! boy—you don't want to go back there now in mid-winter. The roads are piled up with drifts to the top of the stone fences and the boughs of the sugar-bush are weighed down with snow till you'd think you was walking through a grove of Christmas trees."

"Oh, go on!" pleaded Dane, as he paused. His eyes were closed, but a smile rested on his face as if the scenes Jimmy described were his for the moment. "Jimmy, it's—it's like heaven to hear you talk about it! Don't stop."

To keep the smile on the white face, that rapt, ineffable smile of content, Jimmy talked on. Over forty years lay between him and the scenes he was recalling. He had wandered far afield from his straight-going, path-keeping Puritan family. He had been glad at times that they had lost track of him, and that wherever he went he was known only as "Jimmy." Gradually the reminiscences like the touch of a familiar hand on a troubled brow, soothed Dane into forgetfulness of his surroundings, and he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Just at dusk that evening, when Batty Carson went around to the kitchen for his usual glass of new milk, he was surprised to see Jimmy down by the wood-pile. He was vigorously at work, helping unload a wagon of mesquite, and quite as vigorously scolding the Indian who had brought it for coming so late.

"Thought he was going to leave," croaked Batty, nodding towards the wood-pile as he took the glass extended towards him.

Hillis chuckled. "Says he's staying on Dane's account; that it would have touched the heart of a coyote the way he begged not to be left to die among strangers. It seems they're both from the same state, so they're almost claiming kin. I rather guess though, that when he'd cooled down he was glad of any old excuse to stay, and when the boy begged him and Mrs. Welsh seconded the motion, he felt he could give in without any let-down to his dignity."

The Indian, gathering up his reins, rattled away in the empty wagon, and Jimmy began to fill his chip-basket, singing in a high, tremulous falsetto as he worked. His voice had been his pride in his youth. It was still sweet, although it cracked at times on the higher notes—

"Wa-ait for me at heav-un's gate,
Swe-et Belle Mahone!"

Hillis laughed. "Sings as if he fairly feels his wings sprouting. It's a sure sign he's at peace with the world when he trots out those sentimental old tunes. He doesn't sound now much like the man who was in here this noon, cussin' and slashing around with a butcher knife."

But Jimmy had not forgotten. He cooked his own supper that night, first ostentatiously wiping the skillet and everything else that Matsu had touched, with such an expression of disgust on his face that the little Jap's fine sense of humour was tickled. He shrugged his shoulders, giggled his usual jolly giggle, and afterwards mimicked the whole scene until Mrs. Welsh and Hillis nearly choked with laughter.

Dane was up in a few days, able to go to the dining room and to drive short distances. Young Mrs. Courtland spoke of his improvement to Jimmy one morning as they watched him drive away with Hillis in the ranch surrey. They were going to a neighbouring orange grove to replenish the stock in the storeroom. Jimmy, kneeling in the path, mending Buddy's wooden goat, drove a final tack before he straightened himself to answer.

"No, ma'am!" he said emphatically. "That boy'll never be what is to say really better. When he tears the last leaf off that calendar in his tent he ain't going to need next year's."

Mrs. Courtland looked up, shocked, frightened. "He seems almost as well as my husband, and he is going to get well." She said it defiantly.

"Sure," answered Jimmy. "But he isn't dying of homesickness and worry along with his lung trouble. He's got you and Buddy and the cash. He doesn't have to drive himself nearly crazy thinking that the time is bound to come when those he loves best will be left without a roof over their heads on account of him. It was worse than cruel—it was a downright crime for that doctor to build their hopes up so. If he'd had sense enough to doctor a June-bug he'd have seen that nothing can cure the lad. To send him on such a wild goose chase is bad enough, but to send him alone and as poor as he is—Good Lord—"

Jimmy paused, remembering his audience, just in time to stop the malediction on his tongue.

"But," urged Mrs. Courtland, unconsciously moved to the championship of the unknown doctor by the fact that her father was a physician, "other men have come alone and they seem to be getting on all right."

"Yes, but if you take notice they're all the kind that had bucked up against the world before they got sick, and were used to shifting for themselves. Now there's Batty Carson. He's going to get well. He goes about it as if he was training to get on a foot-ball team. So much deep breathing every so often, hot beef juice at nine, raw eggs at ten, fifty licks at the wood-pile at eleven—What with his sun baths and water baths and rubdowns, looking at his thermometer and weighing himself and feeling his pulse and counting his breaths and watching the clock, he ain't got time to miss his folks. Most of the boarders this year happen to be that sort, or else they've got money to go in for all kinds of amusements that make them forget their troubles. But there was a pitiful lot of cases here last winter. They was too far gone when they come to have any fight in 'em. And that's what I say—it's heartless of the doctors to ship them off here when they've only one chance in a thousand. The West is full of 'em and it ain't right."

Batty Carson, shuffling cards at the little table set in the shade behind the next tent, looked up with a wink when he heard his name mentioned. The others in the game smiled with him as Jimmy went on, and a voice from one of the farther tents called, "Go it, Jimmy! You ought to hire a hall and not waste all that eloquence on a lot of lungers who already vote your ticket. Wish you'd bring me a box of matches when you get around to it."

Taking the tents in order, as was his custom, emptying slops and filling pitchers, Jimmy gradually worked his way along the row until he came to the one outside of which the card-game was going on in silence. As he moved around inside setting things to rights, Batty Carson held up a finger and winked.

"Listen!" he whispered. There was a clinking of bottles on the wash-stand, then a soft plash into the slop-jar, and Jimmy cleared his throat with a muffled "kha-a-a" as if he had just swallowed something good.

"The old buzzard's been at my alcohol bottle again," whispered Batty. "Last time he went against it he didn't leave me enough for one good rub-down, and then he had the face to reel off a long temperance lecture on what a pity it was that so many of us fellows kept spirits in our tents."

A loud laugh followed Jimmy as he walked out innocently clinking his pails. There was a smell of alcohol in his wake. He had spilled some on his clothes. Ignorant of the cause of their mirth he looked back at them over his shoulder with a friendly smile. As he dropped the bucket into the cistern out by the bamboo thicket, his voice floated back in a high cracked falsetto:

"Wa-ait for me at heav-un's gate,
Swe-et Belle Mahone!"

Batty laughed again. "What kind of a bet will you fellows put up on Jimmy's prospect of even getting within gun-shot of heaven's gate?" he asked.

"I never bet on a dead certainty," answered the man whose turn it was to play. "He knows he's sampled about everything that goes on in a mining camp or anywhere else in a new territory, and he's nothing to show for himself that St. Peter could take as a passport. But he isn't worrying, as long as he's provided for in this world. His pension keeps him in clothes and tobacco and when he's too old to work the Soldiers' Home will take him in."

"He's not worrying over the next world either," some one else added. "Mrs. Welsh says he has sixty dollars salted down in bank that he's saved to have masses said for the repose of his soul. Not that he's tied his belief to anything in particular, but he once had a wife back in his young days, who was one of the faithful."

"Let us hope that particular bank won't suspend payment," laughed Batty, "for it's his only hope of ever joining his Belle Mahone."

Dane came back from his drive with new interest in life. The sight of the olive groves and almond orchards, the alfalfa fields and acres of lemon and orange trees lying green and gold between the irrigating canals, had lured him away from thoughts of his condition. He was not so shy and speechless that day at dinner. He even walked out on the desert a little way that afternoon, with Buddy clinging to his hand to pilot him to the wonderful nest of a trap-door spider. For a day or two he made feeble efforts to follow Batty Carson's example. Instead of watching the eastern horizon he watched Mrs. Courtland ply her embroidery needle or bead-work loom, preparing for the Christmas now so near at hand.

But it was only a few days till he was back in the depths again. The slightest exertion exhausted him. Burning with fever he clung to Jimmy, talking of the white hillsides at home, the icicles on the eaves, the snow-laden cedars. Then when the chill came again he shivered under the blankets Jimmy tucked around him, and buried his face in the pillow to hide the tears that shamed him.

"I can't help it," he gasped at last. "I hate myself for being so babyish. But, Jimmy, it's like living in a nightmare to have that one thought haunt me day and night. I don't mind the dying—I'll be glad to go. It racks me so to cough. But it's the dying so far away from home—alone! I can't go without seeing mother once more! Just once, Jimmy, one little minute."

The old man's mouth twitched. There was no answer to that kind of an appeal.

"Mail!" called a voice outside. The ranch wagon had come back from Ph[oe]nix, and Hillis was going from tent to tent with the letter-bag. "Mr. Dane Ward," he called. "One letter and one package. Christmas is beginning a week ahead of time," he added as Jimmy came to the door.

Dane sat up and opened the letter first, with fingers that trembled in their eagerness. He read snatches of it aloud, his face brightening with each new item of interest.

"They're going to have an oyster supper and a Christmas tree for the Sunday-school. And Charlie Morrow broke into the mill-pond last Saturday, and the whole skating party nearly drowned trying to fish him out. Mr. Miller's barn burned last week, and Ed Morris and May Dawson ran away and were married at Beaver Dam Station. It's like opening a window into the village and looking down every street to get mother's letters. I can see everybody that passes by, and pretty near smell what people are cooking for dinner. She's sending my Christmas present a week ahead of time, because from what I wrote about the cold nights she was sure I'd need it right away. Cut the string, please, Jimmy."

Two soft outing flannel shirts rolled out of the paper wrapping. Dane spread them on the bed beside him with fond touches.

"She made every stitch of them herself," he said proudly, smiling as he turned the page for the last sentence.

"Christmas will not be Christmas to us with you so far away, dear boy, but we are going to be brave and make as merry as we can, looking forward to the time when that blessed land of sunshine will send you back to us, strong and well."

The letter dropped from his hands and Jimmy heard him say with a shivering, indrawn breath, "But that time will never come! Never!" Then catching up the mass of soft flannel as if it brought to him in some way the touch of the dear hands that had shaped it, he flung himself back on the pillow, burying his face in it to stifle the sobs that would slip out between his clenched teeth.

"Never go home again!" he moaned once. "God! How can I stand it!" Then in a pitiful whisper, "Oh, mother, I want you so."

Jimmy got up and tip-toed softly out of the tent.

That night, Batty Carson, taking his after-supper constitutional, strode up and down outside the camp, his hands in his overcoat pockets. The little tents, each with a lamp inside, throwing grotesque shadows on the white canvas walls, made him think of a cluster of Chinese lanterns. Only the last one in the last row was dark, and moved by a friendly impulse to ask after Dane's welfare, he strolled over towards it. Had it not been for the odour of a rank pipe, he might have stumbled over Jimmy, in the camp chair outside Dane's door.

"Playing sentinel?" he asked.

"No, just keeping the lad company a spell. He can't bear to hear them kiotes howl."

"You're lively company, I must say," bantered Batty. "I didn't hear much animated conversation as I came up."

Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. "No," he said in a lower tone. "He's asleep now."

Lighting a cigar, Batty unfolded a camp stool which was leaning against one of the guy ropes, and seated himself. Jimmy seemed in a confidential mood.

"I've been setting here," he began, "studying about a Christmas present that had ought to be made this year. I ain't got no call to make it, but there's plenty of others that could do it and never miss it. I've got an old uncle that sets 'em up now and then, but he isn't liable to send me another check before February, so I can't do it."

"Oh, your Uncle Sam," laughed Batty, remembering Jimmy's pension and the object of his savings. "Well," speaking slowly between puffs, "I'm not counting on making any Christmas presents this year except to myself. Being sick makes a man selfish, I suppose. But if I have to be exiled out here in the cactus and greasewood, I intend to make it as pleasant for myself as possible. So I know what's going into my Christmas stocking: the dandiest little saddle horse this side of the Mississippi, and a rifle that can knock the spots off anything in Salt River valley."

When Jimmy answered his voice was still lower, for a cough had sounded in the tent behind them.

"Well, Sandy Claws and I ain't never been acquainted, so to speak. I neither give or get, but if I had the price of a saddle horse in my breeches it wouldn't go into my stocking. It 'ud take that boy in there back home to die, as fast as steam cars can travel. A man would almost be justified in giving up his hope of heaven to give a poor soul the comfort that would be to him."

The distant barking of coyotes sounded through the starlight. Jimmy pulled at his pipe in silence and Batty sat blowing wreaths of cigar smoke around his head until a woman's voice struck musically across the stillness.

"Come, little son, hug father Ted good night."

As Batty watched the shadow pantomime on the white canvas walls of the tent in front of him, the baby arms clasped around the young father's neck, and the beautiful girl bending over them, laughing, he understood the miracle that was bringing Courtland back from the very grave. The screen door slammed and she came out with the child in her arms, a golf-cape wrapped over his nightgown. Then the shadows changed to the next tent. Buddy, with his bare pink toes stretched out toward the little drum stove, sat in his mother's lap and listened to the good night story.

It was a Christmas story as well, and the three Wise Men in quest of the starlit manger came out of the shadows of a far-gone past, to live again before the glowing wonder of a little child's eyes. Once he glanced over his shoulder when she told of the silver bells jingling on the trappings of the camels, and he clasped his dimpled hands with a long, satisfied sigh when the gifts were opened at last before the Christ-child's cradle.

"An' nen the little king was so glad," he added, lying back happily against his mother's shoulder.

"Yes, dear heart."

"An' the little king's mothah was glad, too," he persisted. "She liked people to give fings to her little boy."

"Oh yes, she was the happiest of all. Now shut your eyes, little son, and we'll rock-a-bye-baby-in-the-tree-top."

The two shadows were merged into one as the rocking chair swayed back and forth a moment in time to a low, sweet crooning. Then Buddy sat up straight and laid an imperative hand on the cheek pressed against his curly hair.

"Stop singin', Mothah Ma'wy!" he demanded. "I want to go there. I want to take 'em fings to make 'm glad!"

She tried to explain, but he would not be appeased. The little mouth quivered with disappointment. "If they're all gone away up to heaven how can I find the king, Mothah Ma'wy?"

"Oh, little son, we still have the star!" she cried, clasping him close and kissing him.

"Show it to me!" he demanded, slipping from her lap and pattering towards the door in his bare feet. She caught him up again with more kisses, and holding him close began to grope for words simple enough to make it plain—that the Star which wise men follow now, when they go with gifts for the Christ-child's gladdening, is the Star of love and good-will to men, and the Way lies near at hand through the hearts of his poor and needy.

When she finished at last, Batty's cigar had gone out, and Jimmy, stirred by some old memory or by some new vision, was staring fixedly ahead of him with unseeing eyes. Neither man moved until the last note of the lullaby, "Oh little town of Bethlehem," faltered into silence. Then without a word, each rose abruptly and went his separate way.

It was reported in camp next day at dinner that Dane was going home, and that the doctor on his morning rounds had consented to engage a sleeper for him and help him aboard the first Eastern-bound train. While the doctor gave it as his opinion that it was suicidal for any one in his condition to go back to such a climate in mid-winter, he offered no remonstrance. Nor could any one else in the face of such pathetic joy as Dane's, over his unexpected release.

It was with a sigh of relief that Mrs. Welsh turned from the departing carriage to begin her preparations for Christmas. It would have been depressing for all the camp to have had any one in their midst during the holidays as ill as Dane; besides she had work for Jimmy other than nursing. There were trips to be made down the canal after palm leaves and the coral berries of the feathery pepper trees. There were the dining-room walls to be covered with those same Christmas greens, and since Mrs. Courtland wished it, a little cedar to be brought out from the town market, and decked for the centre of the table.

In the days which followed Dane's departure, Jimmy was so rushed with extra work that gradually he began to ignore his grudge against Matsu. One night, having absent-mindedly followed Hillis in filling his plate from the pots and pans on the stove, instead of cooking for himself, he thereafter ate whatever Matsu prepared without comment.

Maybe the mere handling of the Christmas symbols induced a mellower mood, for when the last taper was in place on the tinsel decked evergreen he felt so at peace with all mankind that he included the little heathen in his invitation, when he called Hillis in to admire his handiwork. He was whistling softly when he stepped out doors from the dining-room, and turned the latch behind him. The shaggy old dog rose up from the door-mat and followed him as he strolled down towards the highroad. He was in his shirt-sleeves, for the dusk was warm and springlike. A great star hung over the horizon.

"It's Christmas eve, Banjo," he said in a confidential tone to the dog. "I guess Dane is home by this time. By rights he ought to have got there this morning."

Banjo responded with a friendly wag and crowded closer to rub his head against Jimmy. For the twentieth time that day the old man's hand stole down into his empty pocket on a fruitless errand.

"Nary a crumb," he muttered, "and not a cent left to get one. Banjo, I'd give both ears for a good chaw right now. I'm not grudging it, but I sure would 'a' held back a dime or two if I hadn't thought there was another plug in the shack."

Banjo bristled up and growled.

"Hush, you beast!" scolded Jimmy. "You ought to be so full of peace and good-will this here Christmas eve that there wouldn't be room for a single growl in your ugly old hide. I'd be if I could lay teeth on the chaw I'm hankering for. What's the matter with you anyhow?"

With his hand on the dog's head to quiet him, he peered down the dim road. A boy on a shaggy Indian pony was loping towards him.

"Is this Welsh's ranch?" he called. "Then I've got a telegram for somebody. It's addressed mighty queer—just says 'Jimmy, care of Mrs. Clara Welsh.'"

"Well, I'm a—greaser!" was all that Jimmy could ejaculate as he reached for the yellow envelope. He turned it over with growing curiosity. "First telegram I ever got in my life, and me sixty odd years," he muttered.

"There's a dollar charges for delivering it out so far," said the boy. Jimmy's hand went down into his pocket again.

"I'll have to go to the house for it," he said. "You wait."

Then he waited himself. Batty Carson was strolling down the road. It would be easier to apply to him for the loan than to Mrs. Welsh.

"Has the old uncle died and left you a fortune?" laughed Batty, as he handed over the dollar.

"Blamed if I can make out," answered Jimmy, holding the scrap of paper at arms length and squinting at it. "I ain't got my specs. Here! you read it."

Batty, taking the telegram, read in his hoarse whisper:

"Dane arrived safely God bless you Matthew twentyfive forty.

Harriet Ward."

Then he looked up for an explanation. Jimmy was staring at him open-mouthed. "Well, if that ain't the blamedest message ever was," he exclaimed. "I don't know any sucker named Matthew. Is the woman plumb crazy?"

Batty looked up from the second reading, enlightened.

"No, I take it she wanted to send you some sort of a Christmas greeting, but probably she's as poor as she is pious and had to count her words. Come on, we'll look up Matthew twenty-five and forty. I guess I haven't forgotten how to do such stunts, even if it has been such a precious while since the last one."

He led the way to his tent, and while Jimmy lighted the lamp he began burrowing through his trunk. Down at the very bottom he found it, the Book he was looking for, then the chapter and the verse. When he cleared his throat and read the entire telegram it sounded strangely impressive in his hoarse whisper:

"Dane arrived safely. God bless you. 'And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'"

There was an awkward pause as they faced each other a moment, pondering the queer message. Then as a conscious red began to burn up through the tan of Jimmy's weather-beaten face, Batty understood.

"You sent that boy home to his mother," he began, but Jimmy, bolting out of the tent, shambled off, shamefaced, through the dusk.

For a long time Batty stood in the door looking out over the darkening desert. The one star swinging above the horizon seemed to point the way to a little home among snow-clad hills, where Christmas gladness had reached its high-tide. Presently as the supper-bell rang, a voice came floating up from the bamboo thicket. Cracked and thin it was, but high and jubilant, as if the old man had forgotten that he had no tobacco for the refreshment of his soul in this world, and no prospect of a mass for its repose in the next.

"Wa-it for me at heav-un's gate,
Sweet Belle Mahone!"

"All right for you, old Jimmy," whispered Batty to himself. "In the game St. Peter keeps the score for, you'll be counted the highest card that this camp holds."

The Second Traveler

Gid Wiggan
In the Wake of a Honeymoon

NO matter what kind of a procession paraded the streets of Gentryville, one unique tailpiece always brought up the rear. As the music of the band died away in the distance, and the pomp of the pageant dwindled down to the last straggling end, necks about to be relieved of their long tension invariably turned for one more look. It was then that old Gid Wiggan drove by in his Wild-cat Liniment wagon, as unfailing as the Z that ends the alphabet.

Lank and stoop-shouldered, with a long, thin beard that reached his lap, and a high, bell-crowned hat pulled down to meet his flabby, protruding ears, he of himself was enough to provoke a laugh; but added to this he bore aloft on a pole the insignia that proclaimed his calling. It was a stuffed wild-cat, shelf-worn and weather-beaten, glaring with primeval fierceness with its one glass eye, and wearing a ridiculously meek expression on the side that had been bereft.

Across the ribs of the old black horse that drew the wagon was painted in white letters, "Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment;" but as if this were not advertisement enough, the proprietor sowed little handbills through the crowd, guaranteeing that the liniment (made from the fat of the animal) would cure any ache in the whole category of human ills. He had followed in the wake of the Gentryville processions so many years that he had come to be regarded as much a matter of course as the drum-major or the clown. Civic or military, the occasion made no difference. He followed a circus as impartially as he came after the troops reviewing before the Governor's stand, and he had been known to follow even one lone band-wagon through the town, on its mission of advertising a minstrel troupe.

There must have been something in the geography of the Wiggan family corresponding to a water-shed, else his course in life could not have differed so widely from his brother's. They had drifted as far apart as twin raindrops, fated to find an outlet in opposite seas. Indeed, so great was the difference that the daughters of the Hon. Joseph Churchill Wiggan (distinct accent on the last syllable when referring to them) scarcely felt it incumbent upon them to give his brother Gideon the title of uncle.

To Louise and Maud the proper accentuation of their family name was vital, since it seemed to put up a sort of bar between them and the grotesque liniment peddler. The townspeople always emphasized the first syllable in speaking of him.

The brothers had turned their backs upon each other, even in the building of their houses. While only an alley separated their stables in the rear, the Hon. Joseph's mansion looked out on a spacious avenue, and old Gid's cottage faced a dingy tenement street. He had his laboratory in the loft of his stable, from the windows of which he could overlook his brother's back premises.

Maud and Louise, regarding him and his business in the light of a family skeleton, ignored him as completely as a family skeleton can be ignored when it is of the kind that will not stay in its allotted closet. It seemed to meet them every time they opened their palatial front door. They could not turn a street corner without coming upon it. Only the ultra-sensitive young lady just home from the most select of fashionable schools can know the pangs that it cost Louise to see her family name staring at her in white letters from the bony sides of that old horse, in connection with a patent medicine advertisement; and the faintest whiff of any volatile oil suggesting liniment was enough to elevate Maud's aristocratic nose to the highest degree of scorn and disgust. Once, years ago, when the girls were too young to be ashamed of their eccentric kinsman, they had visited his laboratory out of childish curiosity. He had given them peanuts from a pocket redolent with liniment, and had asked them to come again, but they had had no occasion to repeat the visit until after they were grown.

It was the night before Louise's wedding day. They had both finished dressing for the evening, but, not quite satisfied with her appearance, Louise still stood before the mirror. She was trying to decide how to wear one of the roses which she had just shaken out of the great bunch on her dressing table. Ordinarily she would not have hesitated, for there was nothing she could do or wear that would not be admired by this little Western town. It was the card accompanying the roses which made her pause—the correct, elegant little card, engraved simply, "Mr. Edward Van Harlem." It seemed to confront her with the critical stare of the most formal New York aristocracy, coldly questioning her ability to live up to it and its traditions.

That the Van Harlems had violently opposed their son's marrying outside their own select circle she well knew. His mother could not forgive him, but he was her idol, and she was following him to his marriage as she would have followed to his martyrdom. By this time she was probably in Gentryville, at the hotel. She had refused to meet Louise until the next day.

Louise laid the great, leafy-stemmed rose against the white dress she wore. It was a beautiful picture that her mirror showed her, and for an instant there was a certain proud lifting of the girlish head; a gesture not unworthy the haughty Mrs. Van Harlem herself. But the next moment a tender light shone in her eyes, as if some sudden memory had banished the thought of the Knickerbocker displeasure.

The maid had brought in the evening paper, and Maud, picking it up, began reading the headlines aloud. Louise scarcely heard her. When one's lover is coming before the little cuckoo in the clock has time to call out another hour, what possible interest can press dispatches hold?

She laid the velvety petals against her warm cheek, and then softly touched them to her lips. At that, her own reflection in the mirror seemed to look at her with such a conscious smile that she glanced over her shoulder to see if her sister had been a witness too. As she did so, Maud dropped the paper with a horrified groan.

"Oh, Louise!" she cried. "What shall we do? There's to be an industrial parade to-morrow morning, with dozens of floats. The line of march is directly past the Continental Hotel. What will Mrs. Van Harlem say when she sees Uncle Gid's wagon and our name in the Wiggan Wild-cat advertisement?"

Louise dropped weakly into a chair, echoing her sister's groan. The colour had entirely left her face. She was more in awe of her patrician lover and his family than she had acknowledged, even to herself.

"Think of that awful, old moth-eaten wild-cat on a pole!" giggled Maud, hysterically.

"Think of Uncle Gid himself!" almost shrieked Louise. "It would kill me to have him pointed out to the Van Harlems as father's brother, and somebody will be sure to do it. There's always somebody mean enough to do such things."

Maud pushed aside the curtain and peered out into the June twilight, now so dim that the street lamps had begun to glimmer through the dusk.

"If we could only shut him up somewhere," she suggested. "Lock him down cellar—by accident—until after the parade, then he couldn't possibly disgrace us."

There was a long silence. Then Maud, dropping the curtain on the dusk of the outer world, turned from the window and came dancing back into the middle of the brightly lighted room.

"I've thought of a plan," she cried, jubilantly. "We can't do anything with Uncle Gid, but if the wild-cat and harness could be hidden until after the parade, that would keep him safely at home, hunting for them."

Louise caught at the suggestion eagerly, but immediately sank back with a despairing sigh. "It's of no use!" she exclaimed. "There's no one whom we could trust to send. If Uncle Gid should have the faintest suspicion of such a plot, there is nothing too dreadful for him to attempt in retaliation. He'd bring up the rear of the wedding procession itself with that disreputable old beast on a pole, if he thought it would humble our pride."

As she spoke, she again caught sight of the little card that had come with the roses. It nerved her to sudden action. "I must go myself," she cried, desperately, springing up from her chair.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Maud, "you're surely joking. It's pitch dark in the stable by this time. Besides you might meet some one—"

"It's my only salvation," answered Louise, with an excited tremor in her voice. "Oh, you don't know the Van Harlems! Come on, Sis, and help me, that's a dear. It will be our last lark together."

"And our first one of this kind," answered Maud, drawing back. "Edward will be here in a few minutes, and—"

"All the more reason for us to hurry," interrupted Louise, taking a candle from the silver sconce on her dressing table, and snatching up some matches. "Come on!"

Carried away by her sister's impetuosity, Maud followed softly down the back stairs and across the tennis court. In their white dresses they glimmered through the dusk like ghosts. They were laughing under their breath when they started out, but as they crossed the dark alley they looked around nervously, and clutched each other like frightened schoolgirls.

Ten minutes later they were stealing up the back stairs again, carrying something between them wrapped in Maud's white petticoat. She had taken it off and wrapped it around the beast to avoid touching it. They had not been able to find a safe hiding place in the stable, and in sheer desperation had decided to carry it home with them for the night. A strong odour of liniment followed in their wake, for Louise, in her frantic haste, had upset a bottle all over the wild-cat, and liberally spattered herself with the pungent, oily mixture.

As they hurried up the stairs, the cook suddenly opened the door into the back hall, sending a stream of light across them from the kitchen. There was a look of amazement on her startled face as she recognized her young mistresses coming in the back way at such an hour, but she was too well trained to say anything. She only sniffed questioningly as the strange smell reached her nostrils, then shut the door.

Just as the girls reached the head of the stairs there was a loud ring of the front door-bell. "Edward!" exclaimed Louise, helplessly letting her end of the bundle slip.

"Run and change your dress," said Maud. "You are all cobwebs and soot from dragging that harness into the coal-cellar. I'll attend to this."

Opening the door into a little trunk room at the end of the hall, she dragged her burden inside. An empty dress-box on the floor suggested an easy way of disposing of it. But when she had stuffed it in, still wrapped in the petticoat, not satisfied as to its secrecy, she opened an empty trunk and lifted the box into that. As she passed her sister's door Louise called her.

"Here!" she said, despairingly, holding out both hands. "We might as well give up. Smell!"

Maud's nose went up in air. "Liniment!" she exclaimed, solemnly. "Yes, it's fate. We can't get away from it."

"Edward will wonder what it is," said Louise, almost tearfully. "Oh, it seems as if he must surely know. There's no mistaking that!"

Maud poured some cologne on her handkerchief, and rubbed it briskly over her sister's fingers. "You look as frightened as Blue Beard's wife when she dropped the key in the bloody closet."

All through her dressing, Louise kept sniffing suspiciously at her dainty fingers, and even when she was ready to go downstairs, stopped at the door to look back, like a second Lady Macbeth.

"'Not all the odours of Araby can sweeten that little hand,'" she said in a tragic whisper, and Maud answered under her breath:

"'You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
The scent of the roses will cling 'round it still.'"

A little later, Mrs. Wiggan's French maid, going into the trunk room with an armful of clothes, began packing the bride's dainty trousseau. The trunks to be used for that purpose had been pointed out to her that afternoon.

As she opened the first one, such a penetrating odour greeted her that she drew back.

"Maybe ze camphor ball," she exclaimed aloud, lifting a corner of the box which nearly filled the bottom of the trunk. "Ah yes!" she went on, peeping in. "It ees mademoiselle's furs, what air protect from ze bugs by zat killing odair. It will presairve also ze woollens as well." Forthwith she began deftly packing a pile of snowy flannels around the box which held the family disgrace.

Twenty-four hours later, that trunk among a number of others was jogging along in a baggage car on its way to New York. It was checked to the pier from which the Majestic was to sail that week, and tagged, "For the hold."

It was the first parade that old Gid Wiggan had missed in twenty years, but it was not his niece's plotting which kept him at home. He lay with closed eyes in his dark little bedroom, too ill to know that a procession was passing. The old man had come to a place where he could no longer follow at the heels of a cheerful crowd. He must branch off by himself now, and find his solitary way as best he could, over a strangely lonesome road.

"He's an old miser, but it won't do to let him die like a heathen," said one of the neighbours, when his condition was discovered. So there were watchers by his bedside when the end came. Carriages had been rolling back and forth all the evening, and at last the ponderous rumbling aroused him.

"What's that?" he asked, opening his eyes as the sound of wheels reached him. "Is the parade coming?"

"Only the carriages driving back from St. Paul's," was the answer. "There's a wedding there to-night."

Old Gid closed his eyes again. "I remember now," he said. "It's Joe's little girl, but I didn't get a bid. They're ashamed of their old uncle. Well, they'll never be bothered with him any more now, nor any of his belongings."

The watchers exchanged glances and repeated the remark afterwards to the curious neighbours who came to look at the old man as he lay in his coffin. He had long had the reputation of being a miser, and more than one hand that day was passed searchingly over some piece of battered furniture. It was a common belief on that street that his fortune was stuffed away in some of the threadbare cushions.

His will, which came to light soon after, directed that the rickety old house should be sold to pay the expenses of his last illness and burial, and to erect a monument over him. As if not content with humiliating his family in the flesh, he had ordered that it be cut in stone: "Here lies the manufacturer and proprietor of Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment." The old horse, after taking the part of chief mourner at his funeral, was to be chloroformed.

Of kith and kindred there had been no mention until the last clause of the will, by which he left the meagre contents of his laboratory to a distant cousin in Arizona, whom he had never seen, but who bore the same name as himself, with the addition of a middle initial. This was the clause which turned Gentryville upside down:

"And I also give, devise and bequeath to the said Gideon J. Wiggan, my stuffed wild-cat, hoping that he will find in it the mascot that I have found."

The same letter which informed the Arizona cousin of his legacy told him that it had mysteriously disappeared. No money was found in the house, and the disappearance of the wild-cat strengthened the prevalent belief that old Gid had used it as a receptacle for his savings, and had hidden it with all a miser's craftiness.

A week later the Arizona cousin appeared, having come East to unearth the mystery and to meet the remaining members of the Wiggan family, who, he understood, were living in Gentryville. He was too late. Maud and her mother had closed the house immediately after the wedding, and started on a summer jaunt, presumably to Alaska. His letters and telegrams received no answer and he could not locate his relatives, despite his persistent efforts. The more he investigated, the more he became convinced that old Gid, alienated from his immediate family, had made him his heir on account of the name, and that a fair-sized fortune was stuffed away in the body of the missing wild-cat. A few leaves from a queerly kept old ledger confirmed this opinion. Most of them had been torn out, but judging from the ones he examined, the receipts from the liniment sales must have been far greater than people supposed.

He did not suspect his cousin Joseph's family being a party to the disappearance, until some servants' gossip reached him. The cook gave him his first clue, when a dollar jogged her memory. She remembered having seen the young ladies slipping up the back stairs the night before the wedding, carrying something between them. The laundress had asked her the next day where the young ladies could have been to get their dresses so soiled in the evening. They were streaked with coal-soot and smelled strongly of the liniment that their uncle made. The French maid, who had not gone with her mistress, but had taken a temporary position with a dressmaker, recognized the odour when a bottle was brought to her. She swore that it was the same that mademoiselle's furs were filled with. She had smelled it first when she packed them in the trunk.

The evidence of the cook, the laundress and the maid was enough for Gideon J. Wiggan. He was a loud, rough man, without education, but so uniformly successful in all his business enterprises that he had come to have an unbounded conceit, and an unlimited faith in himself. "I never yet bit off any more than I could chew," he was fond of saying. "I'm a self-made man. I've never failed in anything yet. I'm my own lawyer and my own doctor, and now I'll be my own detective; and I'll worm this thing out, if I have to go to Europe to do it."

To Europe he finally went. The happy bridal couple, making a tour of the cathedral towns of England, little dreamed what an avenging Nemesis was following fast in the wake of their honeymoon. From Canterbury to York he followed them, from York to Chester. They had always just gone. Evidently they were trying to elude him. Once he almost had his hand upon them. It was in London. He had reached the Hotel Metropole only two hours after their departure. They had gone ostensibly to Paris, but had left no address. He ground his teeth when he discovered that fact. How was he to trace them further without the slightest clue and without the faintest knowledge of any foreign tongue? For the first time in his life he had to acknowledge himself baffled.

The next day, while he was making cautious inquiries at Scotland Yard, preparatory to engaging a first-class detective, he fell in with an old acquaintance, a man whom he had known in Arizona, and who was employed in the detective service himself. He had been sent over on the trail of some counterfeiters, and seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of information about every wealthy American who had gone abroad that summer. Within half an hour the baffled Gideon had put his case into his hands, humbly acknowledging that for once in his life he had bitten off more than he could chew.

Dinner was in progress in one of the most fashionable hotels of Paris. Edward Van Harlem, seated opposite his wife at one of the many little tables, looked around approvingly. His fastidious eyes saw nothing to criticize in the whole luxurious apartment, except perhaps the too cheerful expression of the man who served them. A more sphinx-like cast of countenance would have betokened better training. Then he looked critically at his wife. It may be that the elegant New Yorker was a trifle over-particular, but he could find no fault here. She was the handsomest woman in the room. She was dressed for the opera, and the priceless Van Harlem pearls around her white throat were worthy of a duchess. She wore them with the air of one, too, he noticed admiringly. He had not realized that a little Western girl could be so regal. Ah! if his mother could only see her now!

"What is it, Louise?" he asked, seeing her give a slight start of surprise. "Those two men at the table behind you," she answered, almost in a whisper, for the service was so noiseless and the general conversation so subdued that she was afraid of being overheard. "They look so common and out of place in their rough travelling suits. They are the only persons in the room not in evening dress."

Van Harlem turned slightly and gave a supercilious glance behind him. "How did such plebeians ever get in here?" he said, frowning slightly. "I wish America would keep such specimens at home. It's queer they should stumble into an exclusive place like this. They must feel like fish out of water."

Louise tasted her soup, and then looked up again. One of the men was watching her like a hawk. His persistent gaze annoyed her, but there was a compelling force about it that made her steal another glance at him. His eyes held hers an instant in startled fascination, then she dropped them with a sudden fear that made her cold and faint. The man bore a remarkable likeness to her Uncle Gideon. More than that, she had discovered some resemblance to her father in the determined chin and the way his hair rolled back from his forehead. That little droop of the lip was like her father's, too. Could it be that there was some remote tie between them and that the stranger was staring at her because he, too, saw a family likeness? She was afraid for her husband to turn around lest he should discover it also.

Ever since the arrival of the mails that morning, she had been in a state of nervous apprehension. Somebody had sent her a marked copy of the Gentryville Times, with an account of her uncle's will and the heir's vain search for his legacy. She had wanted to write immediately to Maud, and ask if she had remembered, in the confusion that followed the wedding, to restore the old man's property, but Edward had carried her away for a day's sight-seeing, and she had had no opportunity.

As she sat idly toying with her dinner, some intuition connected this man with her Uncle Gideon, and she was in a fever of impatience to get away, for fear he might obtrude himself on her husband's notice. When they had first swept into the dining-room, the Arizona cousin had leaned over the table until his face almost touched the detective's. "They're stunners! Ain't they?" he whispered. "Wonder if any of my money bought them pearls and gew-gaws. Well, this show's worth the box-seat prices we paid to get next to 'em. I wonder if the waiter would have promised to put us alongside if I'd offered him any less than a five-franc piece." Then, as Louise's eyes fell before his in embarrassment, he muttered, "She looks guilty, doesn't she! I'll bet my hat she suspicions what we're after."

The two men were only beginning their salad course, when Van Harlem beckoned a waiter and gave an order in French. "What did he say?" asked Wiggan, suspiciously. "I wish I could make out their beastly lingo."

"He sent to call a carriage, and to tell the maid to bring the lady's wraps. They're going to the opera."

"You mean they're going to give us the slip again! Come on! We must stop 'em!"

"Now, Gid, you just cool down," advised the detective, calmly. "I'm working this little game. It's a family affair and there's no use making a row in public. There's plenty of time." But his client had no ear for caution. The Van Harlems had risen, and were going slowly down the long drawing-room. All eyes followed the beautiful American girl and the aristocratic young fellow who carried himself like a lord. The mirror-lined walls flashed back the pleasing reflection from every side, and then replaced it with a most astonishing sight.

In and out between the little tables with their glitter of cut-glass and silver, dashed a common-looking fellow in a coarse plaid suit. Upsetting chairs, whisking table-cloths from their places, bumping into solemn waiters with their laden trays, he seemed oblivious to everything but the escaping couple. The detective had detained him as long as possible, and the couple had almost reached the door when he started in frantic pursuit. He reached them just as they stepped into the corridor. He tried to curb his trembling voice, but in his excitement it rang out to the farthest corner of the great apartment, high above the music of the violins, playing softly in a curtained alcove.

"You want your what?" demanded the elegant Van Harlem in a tone that would have frozen a less desperate man.

"I want that stuffed wild-cat," he roared, "that your wife's uncle left me in his will, and you made off with. I came all the way from America for it, and I'll have it now, or you'll go to jail, sure as my name is Gideon J. Wiggan."

Louise, already unnerved by her fears at dinner, and exhausted by the tiresome day of sight-seeing, started forward, deathly pale. It seemed to her that the man had shouted out her name so that all Paris must have heard. The disgrace had followed her even over seas.

She looked up piteously at her husband, and then fell fainting in his arms.

"The man's crazy," exclaimed Van Harlem, as he strode with her toward the elevator. "Here, waiter, call the police and have that lunatic put out of the house. He's dangerous."

It was only a moment until he had reached their rooms and had laid Louise gently on a couch, but as he turned to ring for the maid, the two men confronted him on the threshold. The detective bolted the door, and the Arizona cousin took out his revolver.

"No, you don't ring that bell," he exclaimed, seeing Van Harlem move in the direction of the button; "nor you don't get out of here until you hand over that wild-cat. You've got it and your wife knows it. That's why she fainted. My friend here is a detective, and we're going through your things till we find it, for it's full of gold."

Van Harlem moved forward to wrest away the revolver, but the detective presented his. "No, you can't do that either," he said, quietly. "I'm going to see that my friend gets his rights."

With the helpless feeling that he was in the hands of two madmen, Van Harlem stood by while trunk after trunk was overhauled, and the trousseau scattered all over the room. The one containing the flannels had not been unlocked since it left Gentryville. It was the last to be examined.

Louise opened her eyes with a little shriek as a familiar odour penetrated to her consciousness. They had unearthed the family skeleton. "Louise!" cried her husband as the old moth-eaten animal was dragged from under her dainty lingerie. "What under heaven does this mean?" Another fainting spell was her only answer, and the one yellow glass eye leered up at him, as if defying the whole Van Harlem pedigree.

A minute later a stream of saw-dust oozed out from the beast's body, covering the piles of be-ribboned lace and linen, scattered all over the velvet carpet. Then a limp, shapeless skin with its one yellow eye still glaring, was kicked across the room. The Arizona cousin had no further use for it. He had come into his inheritance.

He walked across the room and gave the moth-eaten skin another kick. Then, with an oath, he handed his friend a slip of paper which he had found inside. Written across it in faded purple ink were three straggling lines. It was the formula for making the famous "Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment."

The Third Traveler

The Clown
Towards his Accolade

THE little man in motley, thrusting his face through the curtains of the big circus tent, looked out on the gathering crowds and grinned. To him that assemblage of gaping backwoods pioneers was a greater show than the one he was travelling with, although the circus itself was a pioneer in its way. It was the first that had ever travelled through the almost unbroken forests of southern Indiana, and the fame of its performance at Vincennes had spread to the Ohio long before the plodding oxen had drawn the heavy lion cages half that distance. Such wild rumours of it had found their way across the sparsely settled hills and hollows, that families who had not been out of sight of their cabin chimneys in five years or more were drawn irresistibly circusward.

Standing on a barrel, behind a hole in the canvas of the tent, the little clown amused himself by watching the stream of arrivals. As far as he could see, down the glaringly sunny road, rising clouds of dust betokened the approach of a seemingly endless procession. The whole county appeared to be flocking to the commons just outside of Burnville, where the annual training in military tactics took place on "muster days." People were coming by the wagon-load; nearly every horse carried double, and one old nag ambled up with a row of boys astride her patient back from neck to tail.

It was a hot afternoon in August, and a rank, almost overpowering odour of dog-fennel rose from the dusty weeds trampled down around the tent. The little clown was half stifled by the dust, the heat, and the smell, and the perspiration trickled down his grotesquely painted face; but an occasional impatient flapping of his handkerchief to clear away the dust of a new arrival was all that betrayed his discomfort. He was absorbed in the conversation of a little group who, seated on a log directly under his peep-hole in the canvas, were patiently waiting for the performance to begin.

"My motley can't hold a candle to theirs," he thought, with an amused chuckle, as he surveyed them critically. "Judging by the cut of that girl's old silk dress, it was a part of her grandmother's wedding finery, and she probably spun the stuff for that sunbonnet herself. But the man—Moses in the bulrushes! People back East wouldn't believe me if I told them how he is togged out: tow trousers, broadcloth coat with brass buttons, bare feet, and a coonskin cap, on this the hottest of all the hot dog-days ever created!"

He wiped his face again after this inventory, and steadied himself on the barrel. All unconscious of the audience they were entertaining, the man and girl were retailing the neighbourhood news to a tired-looking little woman, who sat on the log beside them, with a heavy baby in her arms. Their broad Western speech was as unfamiliar as it was amusing to their unseen listener. The barrel shook with his suppressed laughter, as they repeated the rumours they had heard regarding the circus.

"Thar was six oxen to draw the lion cages," said the girl, fanning herself with her sunbonnet. "Sam said them beasts roared to beat the Dutch—two of 'em. And he says thar's a pock-marked Irishman as goes around between acts with a nine-banded armadillo. Ef ye tech it, ye'll never have the toothache no more. But thar's suthin better nor him. Sam says he 'lows we'll jest all die a-laughin' when we see the clown. The whole end of the State has gone wild over that air clown. Sam says they make more fuss over him than they would over the President ef he was t' come to this neck o' woods."

Here the auditor behind the scenes, with his hand on his heart, made such a low bow that he lost his balance, and nearly upset the barrel.

"I reckon the elyfunt will be the biggest sight," drawled the man. "That's what drawed me here. I ain't never seen even the picter of an elyfunt, and they say this is the real live article from t'other side of the world. They say it kin eat a cock of hay six foot high at one meal."

Here the baby stirred and fretted in the woman's arms, and she wearily lifted it to an easier position against her shoulder.

"I wish Jim would hurry up," she sighed, wiping her hot face on a corner of her homespun apron.

"He's over yander helpin' ole Mis' Potter put up her ginger-bread stand," answered the girl, pointing to a large oak-tree on the edge of the common. "I seen 'em when she first come a-drivin' up on that big ox-sled, with a barrel of cider behind her. Law, I reckon she hain't never missed bein' on hand to sell her cakes and cider here on muster-days nary a time in ten years."

"'Tain't Mis' Potter," answered the older woman. "She's ben laid up with rheumatiz nearly all summer. It's Boone Ratcliffe's mother and his little William."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed the girl, with eager interest, standing up to get a better view. "Not ole 'Madam Ratcliffe,' as pap calls her! I've ben honin' for a sight of her ever sence last spring, when I heerd she'd come out from Maryland. I used to hear about her afore Boone married M'randy. It was M'randy as told me about her. She said the ole lady was so rich and so stuck up that she never even tied her own shoes. They had slaves and land and money and everything that heart could wish, and they didn't think that M'randy was good enough for their only son. The letters they writ to Boone trying to head him off made M'randy so mad that I didn't suppose she'd ever git over it."

"She didn't," answered the little woman, "and it was scant welcome they got when they come. The letter they sent a month aforehand never got here, so of course nobody knowed they was a-comin', and they wa'n't nobody down to the Ohio River landin' to meet 'em. My Jim he happened to be thar when they got off'n the flatboat. They was dreadful put out when they didn't find Boone watchin' out for 'em, after comin' all the way from Maryland. Goodness knows what 'ud become of 'em ef Jim hadn't happened acrost 'em. The boat had gone on down the river and left 'em settin' thar on shore amongst the bales and boxes, as helpless as two kittens. Jim he seen 'em a-settin' thar, and bein' a soft-hearted chap and knowin' suthin' was wrong, he up and spoke.

"They was so bewildered like, 'count of not finding Boone and everything bein' so dif'runt from what they lotted on, that they was well-nigh daft. The ole man had ben sick ever sence they left Pittsburg, and they was both plum tuckered out with that long flatboat trip. Jim he jest h'isted 'em into the wagon, big chest and all, and brought 'em on to Burnville.

"He said 'twas plain to be seen they hadn't never been used to roughin' it in any way. The ole gentleman was so sick he had to lean his head on her shoulder all the way, and she kep' a-strokin' his white hair with her fine soft fingers, and talkin' to him as if he'd ben a child. She tried to chirk him up by tellin' him they'd soon be to Boone's home, and talkin' 'bout when Boone was a little feller, tell Jim couldn't hardly stand it, he's that soft-hearted.

"He knew all the time what a disapp'intment was in store when they should set eyes on M'randy and the cabin, and find Boone growed to be so rough and common. It was dark when they got thar. Boone hadn't got home yit, and thar wa'n't a sign of a light about the place. So Jim lef' the ole folks setting in the wagon, and went in to break the news to M'randy, knowin' what a high-tempered piece she is at times. He said she was settin' on the doorstep in her bare feet and dirty ole linsey-woolsey dress, jawin' little William. She'd ben a-makin' soap all day, and was dead tired.

"When Jim tole her what 'twas, the surprise seemed to strike her all of a heap. She never made a move to git up, and as soon as she could git her breath she begun to splutter like blue blazes. She said some folks had more burdens laid onto their shoulders than by rights was their share, and she couldn't see what made them ole people come trackin' out where they was neither wanted nor expected. She hadn't no airthly use for that stuck-up ole Mis' Ratcliffe, if she was Boone's mother. Oh, she jest talked up scan'lous.

"Jim he was afraid they would hear her clear out in the road, so he kep' tryin' to smooth her down, and then he went out and tried to smooth things over to the ole people. By the time they'd climbed out'n the wagon and walked up the path, William had lit a candle, and she was holdin' it over her head in the doorway. The way Jim tole it I could jest see how they stood lookin' at each other, like as they was takin' their measures. Jim said they both seemed to see the difference, M'randy so frowsy and common-lookin', for all her prettiness, and the ole lady so fine and aristocratic in her elegant dress and bunnit. He said he'd never fergit how white and tired-lookin' their old faces showed up in the candle-light, and sort of disapp'inted, too, over the welcome they'd ben expectin' and didn't git.

"M'randy didn't even offer to shake hands. After she'd stared a minute she said, sorter stiff-like, 'Well, I s'pose you may as well come on in.' Jim says there was tears in the ole lady's eyes when she follered M'randy into the cabin, but she wiped 'em away real quick, and spoke up cheerful to ole Mr. Ratcliffe.

"The room was in such a muss there wa'n't an empty chair to set on tell M'randy jerked the things off two of'm and kicked the stuff out of sight under the bed. Then she dusted 'em with her apron, and said in a long-sufferin' sort of tone that she reckoned 'twas about as cheap settin' as standin'.

"Ole Mis' Ratcliffe tried to apologize fer comin'. She said that their daughter back in Maryland tried to keep 'em from it, but that Boone couldn't come to them, and it had been ten years since he had left home, and they felt they must see him once more before they died. Jim said it was so pitiful the way she talked that he got all worked up."

"Why didn't they turn right around and go home the next day?" cried the girl, with flashing eyes. "That's M'randy all over again when she once gits her temper up, but people as rich as them don't have to put up with nobody's high and mighty ways."

"They are not rich any more," was the answer. "A few years ago they lost all they had, slaves, land, and everything, and their married daughter in Baltimore is takin' care of 'em. She was sure they wouldn't find it agreeable out here, so she provided the money for 'em to come back on; but the ole man lost his wallet comin' down on that flatboat, and they don't feel as they could write back and ask her for more. She's good to 'em as can be, but she hasn't got any more than she needs, and they hate to ask for it. That's why the ole lady is here to-day, takin' Mis' Potter's place. Boone persuaded her to come, and tole her if she could make as much as Mis' Potter always does, it will be enough to pay their way back to Maryland. He helped her get ready. I don't know what he said to M'randy to make her stand aside and not interfere, but she made up the ginger-bread as meek as Moses, and let Jim roll the barrel of cider out of the smoke-house without a word."

"Why don't Boone scratch around and raise the money somehow?" put in the man, who had chewed in interested silence as he listened to the story. Now he stopped to bite another mouthful from a big twist of tobacco he took from his broadcloth coat pocket.