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Active Service

by Stephen Crane · English · Gutenberg #2364 · 457,182 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Active Service

Author: Stephen Crane


        
Release date: October 1, 2000 [eBook #2364]
                Most recently updated: April 3, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2364


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACTIVE SERVICE ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*




ACTIVE SERVICE

by Stephen Crane




CHAPTER I.

MARJORY walked pensively along the hall. In the cool
shadows made by the palms on the window ledge, her face
wore the expression of thoughtful melancholy expected on the
faces of the devotees who pace in cloistered gloom. She halted
before a door at the end of the hall and laid her hand on the
knob. She stood hesitating, her head bowed. It was evident
that this mission was to require great fortitude.

At last she opened the door. " Father," she began at once.
There was disclosed an elderly, narrow-faced man seated at a
large table and surrounded by manuscripts and books. The
sunlight flowing through curtains of Turkey red fell sanguinely
upon the bust of dead-eyed Pericles on the mantle. A little
clock was ticking, hidden somewhere among the countless
leaves of writing, the maps and broad heavy tomes that
swarmed upon the table.

Her father looked up quickly with an ogreish scowl.

Go away! " he cried in a rage. " Go away. Go away. Get out "
" He seemed on the point of arising to eject the visitor. It was
plain to her that he had been interrupted in the writing of one
of his sentences, ponderous, solemn and endless, in which wandered
multitudes of homeless and friendless prepositions, adjectives
looking for a parent, and quarrelling nouns, sentences which no
longer symbolised the languageform of thought but which had about
them a quaint aroma from the dens of long-dead scholars. " Get out,"
snarled the professor.

Father," faltered the girl. Either because his formulated
thought was now completely knocked out of his mind by his
own emphasis in defending it, or because he detected
something of portent in her expression, his manner suddenly
changed, and with a petulant glance at his writing he laid down
his pen and sank back in his chair to listen. " Well, what is it,
my child ? "

The girl took a chair near the window and gazed out upon
the snow-stricken campus, where at the moment a group of
students returning from a class room were festively hurling
snow-balls. " I've got something important to tell you, father,"
said she,
but i don't quite know how to say it."

"Something important ? " repeated the professor. He was
not habitually interested in the affairs of his family, but this
proclamation that something important could be connected
with them, filled his mind with a capricious interest.  "Well,
what is it, Marjory ? "

She replied calmly: " Rufus Coleman wants to marry me."

"What?" demanded the professor loudly. "Rufus Coleman.
What do you mean? "

The girl glanced furtively at him. She did not seem to be able
to frame a suitable sentence.

As for the professor, he had, like all men both thoughtless
and thoughtful, told himself that one day his daughter would
come to him with a tale of this kind. He had never forgotten that
the little girl was to be a woman, and he had never forgotten
that this tall, lithe creature, the present Marjory, was a woman.
He had been entranced and confident or entranced and
apprehensive according' to the time. A man focussed upon
astronomy, the pig market or social progression, may
nevertheless have a secondary mind which hovers like a spirit
over his dahlia tubers and dreams upon the mystery of their
slow and tender revelations. The professor's secondary mind
had dwelt always with his daughter and watched with a faith
and delight the changing to a woman of a certain fat and
mumbling babe. However, he now saw this machine, this self-
sustaining, self-operative love, which had run with the ease of a
clock, suddenly crumble to ashes and leave the mind of a great
scholar staring at a calamity. " Rufus Coleman," he repeated,
stunned. Here was his daughter, very obviously desirous of
marrying Rufus Coleman. " Marjory," he cried in amazement
and fear, "what possesses, you? Marry Rufus Colman?"

The girl seemed to feel a strong sense of relief at his prompt
recognition of a fact. Being freed from the necessity of making a
flat declaration, she simply hung her head and blushed
impressively. A hush fell upon them. The professor stared long
at his daugh. ter. The shadow of unhappiness deepened upon
his face. " Marjory, Marjory," he murmured at last. He had
tramped heroically upon his panic and devoted his strength to
bringing thought into some kind of attitude toward this terrible
fact. " I am-I am surprised," he began. Fixing her then with a
stern eye, he asked: "Why do you wish to marry this man? You,
with your opportunities of meeting persons of intelligence. And
you want to marry-" His voice grew tragic.  "You want to marry
the Sunday editor of the New York Eclipse."

" It is not so very terrible, is it?" said Marjory sullenly.

"Wait a moment; don't talk," cried the professor. He arose
and walked nervously to and fro, his hands flying in the air. He
was very red behind the ears as when in the Classroom some
student offended him. " A gambler, a sporter of fine clothes, an
expert on champagne, a polite loafer, a witness knave who edits
the Sunday edition of a great outrage upon our sensibilities.
You want to marry him, this man? Marjory, you are insane. This
fraud who asserts that his work is intelligent, this fool comes
here to my house and-"

He became aware that his daughter was regarding him coldly.
"I thought we had best have all this part of it over at once," she
remarked.

He confronted her in a new kind of surprise. The little keen-
eyed professor was at this time imperial, on the verge of a
majestic outburst. " Be still," he said. "Don't be clever with your
father. Don't be a dodger. Or, if you are, don't speak of it to me. I
suppose this fine young man expects to see me personally ? "

" He was coming to-morrow," replied Marjory. She began to
weep. " He was coming to-morrow."

" Um," said the professor. He continued his pacing while
Marjory wept with her head bowed to the arm of the chair. His
brow made the three dark vertical crevices well known to his
students. Some. times he glowered murderously at the
photographs of ancient temples which adorned the walls. "My
poor child," he said once, as he paused near her, " to think I
never knew you were a fool. I have been deluding myself. It has
been my fault as much as it has been yours. I will not readily
forgive myself."

The girl raised her face and looked at him. Finally, resolved
to disregard the dishevelment wrought by tears,
she presented a desperate front with her wet
eyes and flushed cheeks. Her hair was disarrayed. "I don't see
why you can call me a fool," she said. The pause before this
sentence had been so portentous of a wild and rebellious
speech that the professor almost laughed now. But still the
father for the first time knew that he was being un-dauntedly
faced by his child in his own library, in the presence Of 372
pages of the book that was to be his masterpiece. At the back
of his mind he felt a great awe as if his own youthful spirit had
come from the past and challenged him with a glance. For a
moment he was almost a defeated man. He dropped into a chair.
" Does your mother know of this " " he asked mournfully.

"Yes," replied the girl. "She knows. She has been trying to
make me give up Rufus."

"Rufus," cried the professor rejuvenated by anger.

"Well, his name is Rufus," said the girl.

"But please don't call him so before me," said the father with
icy dignity. " I do not recognise him as being named Rufus.
That is a contention of yours which does not arouse my
interest. I know him very well as a gambler and a drunkard, and
if incidentally, he is named Rufus, I fail to see any importance
to it."

" He is not a gambler and he is not a drunkard," she said.

" Um. He drinks heavily-that is well known. He gambles.
He plays cards for money--more than he
possesses-at least he did when he was in college."

" You said you liked him when he was in college."

" So I did. So I did," answered the professor sharply. " I
often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I
know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in
the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their
habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them
through it all and they may go away and do great things. This
happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It
destroys theo- ries. There-there isn't much to say about it. And
sometimes we like this kind of a boy better than we do the-the
others. For my part I know of many a pure, pious and fine-
minded student that I have positively loathed from a personal
point-of-view. But," he added, " this Rufus Coleman, his life in
college and his life since, go to prove how often we get off the
track. There is no gauge of collegiate conduct whatever, until we
can get evidence of the man's work in the world. Your precious
scoundrel's evidence is now all in and he is a failure, or worse."

" You are not habitually so fierce in judging people," said
the girl.

"I would be if they all wanted to marry my daughter,"
rejoined the professor. " Rather than let that man make love to
you-or even be within a short railway journey of you,
I'll cart you off to Europe this winter and keep you there
until you forget. If you persist in this silly fancy, I shall at once
become medieval."

Marjory had evidently recovered much of her composure.
"Yes, father, new climates are alway's supposed to cure one,"
she remarked with a kind of lightness.

" It isn't so much the old expedient," said the professor
musingly, "as it is that I would be afraid to leave you herewith
no protection against that drinking gambler and gambling
drunkard."

" Father, I have to ask you not to use such terms in speaking
of the man that I shall marry."

There was a silence. To all intents, the professor remained
unmoved. He smote the tips of his fingers thoughtfully
together. " Ye-es," he observed. "That sounds reasonable from
your standpoint." His eyes studied her face in a long and
steady glance. He arose and went into the hall. When he
returned he wore his hat and great coat. He took a book and
some papers from the table and went away.

Marjory walked slowly through the halls and up to her room.
From a window she could see her father making his way across
the campus labouriously against the wind and whirling snow.
She watched it, this little black figure, bent forward, patient,
steadfast. It was an inferior fact that her father was one of the
famous scholars of the generation. To her, he was now a little
old man facing the wintry winds. Recollect. ing herself and
Rufus Coleman she began to weep again, wailing amid the ruins
of her tumbled hopes. Her skies had turned to paper and her
trees were mere bits of green sponge. But amid all this woe
appeared the little black image of her father making its way
against the storm.


CHAPTER II.

IN a high-walled corrider of one of the college buildings, a
crowd of students waited amid jostlings and a loud buzz of talk.
Suddenly a huge pair of doors flew open and a wedge of young
men inserted itself boisterously and deeply into the throng.
There was a great scuffle attended by a general banging of
books upon heads. The two lower classes engaged in herculean
play while members of the two higher classes, standing aloof,
devoted themselves strictly to the encouragement of whichever
party for a moment lost ground or heart. This was in order to
prolong the conflict.

The combat, waged in the desperation of proudest youth,
waxed hot and hotter. The wedge had been instantly smitten
into a kind of block of men. It had crumpled into an irregular
square and on three sides it was now assailed with remarkable
ferocity.

It was a matter of wall meet wall in terrific rushes, during
which lads could feel their very hearts leaving them in the
compress of friends and foes. They on the outskirts upheld the
honour of their classes by squeezing into paper thickness the
lungs of those of their fellows who formed the centre of the
melee

In some way it resembled a panic at a theatre.

The first lance-like attack of the Sophomores had been
formidable, but the Freshmen outnumbering their enemies and
smarting from continual Sophomoric oppression, had swarmed
to the front like drilled collegians and given the arrogant foe the
first serious check of the year. Therefore the tall Gothic
windows which lined one side of the corridor looked down
upon as incomprehensible and enjoyable a tumult as could
mark the steps of advanced education. The Seniors and juniors
cheered themselves ill. Long freed from the joy of such
meetings, their only means for this kind of recreation was to
involve the lower classes, and they had never seen the victims
fall to with such vigour and courage. Bits of printed leaves,
torn note-books, dismantled collars and cravats, all floated to
the floor beneath the feet of the warring hordes. There were no
blows; it was a battle of pressure. It was a deadly pushing
where the leaders on either side often suffered the most cruel
and sickening agony caught thus between phalanxes of
shoulders with friend as well as foe contributing to the pain.

Charge after charge of Freshmen beat upon the now
compact and organised Sophomores. Then, finally, the rock
began to give slow way. A roar came from the Freshmen and
they hurled themselves in a frenzy upon their betters.

To be under the gaze of the juniors and Seniors is
to be in sight of all men, and so the Sophomores at this
important moment laboured with the desperation of the half-
doomed to stem the terrible Freshmen.

In the kind of game, it was the time when bad tempers came
strongly to the front, and in many Sophomores' minds a
thought arose of the incomparable insolence of the Freshmen.
A blow was struck; an infuriated Sophomore had swung an
arm high and smote a Freshman.

Although it had seemed that no greater noise could be made
by the given numbers, the din that succeeded this manifestation
surpassed everything. The juniors and Seniors immediately set
up an angry howl. These veteran classes projected themselves
into the middle of the fight, buffeting everybody with small
thought as to merit. This method of bringing peace was as
militant as a landslide, but they had much trouble before they
could separate the central clump of antagonists into its parts.
A score of Freshmen had cried out: "It was Coke. Coke punched
him. Coke." A dozen of them were tempestuously endeavouring
to register their protest against fisticuffs by means of an
introduction of more fisticuffs.

The upper classmen were swift, harsh and hard. "Come, now,
Freshies, quit it. Get back, get back, d'y'hear?" With a wrench of
muscles they forced themselves in front of Coke, who was
being blindly defended by his classmates from intensely earnest
attacks by outraged Freshmen.

These meetings between the lower classes at the door of a
recitation room were accounted quite comfortable and idle
affairs, and a blow delivered openly and in hatred fractured a
sharply defined rule of conduct. The corridor was in a hubbub.
Many Seniors and Juniors, bursting from old and iron discipline,
wildly clamoured that some Freshman should be given the
privilege of a single encounter with Coke. The Freshmen
themselves were frantic. They besieged the tight and dauntless
circle of men that encompassed Coke. None dared confront the
Seniors openly, but by headlong rushes at auspicious moments
they tried to come to quarters with the rings of dark-browed
Sophomores. It was no longer a festival, a game; it was a riot.
Coke, wild-eyed, pallid with fury, a ribbon of blood on his chin,
swayed in the middle of the mob of his classmates, comrades
who waived the ethics of the blow under the circumstance of
being obliged as a corps to stand against the scorn of the whole
college, as well as against the tremendous assaults of the
Freshmen. Shamed by their own man, but knowing full well the
right time and the wrong time for a palaver of regret and
disavowal, this battalion struggled in the desperation of
despair. Once they were upon the verge of making unholy
campaign against the interfering Seniors. This fiery
impertinence was the measure of their state.

It was a critical moment in the play of the college. Four or
five defeats from the Sophomores during the fall had taught the
Freshmen much. They had learned the comparative
measurements, and they knew now that their prowess was ripe
to enable them to amply revenge what was, according to their
standards, an execrable deed by a man who had not the virtue
to play the rough game, but was obliged to resort to uncommon
methods. In short, the Freshmen were almost out of control, and
the Sophomores debased but defiant, were quite out of control.
The Senior and junior classes which, in American colleges
dictate in these affrays, found their dignity toppling, and in
consequence there was a sudden oncome of the entire force of
upper classmen football players naturally in advance. All
distinctions were dissolved at once in a general fracas. The stiff
and still Gothic windows surveyed a scene of dire carnage.

Suddenly a voice rang brazenly through the tumult. It was
not loud, but it was different. " Gentlemen! Gentlemen!'"
Instantly there was a remarkable number of haltings, abrupt
replacements, quick changes. Prof. Wainwright stood at the
door of his recitation room, looking into the eyes of each
member of the mob of three hundred. "Ssh! " said the mob. "
Ssh! Quit! Stop! It's the Embassador! Stop!" He had once
been minister to Austro-Hungary, and forever now to
the students of the college his name was Embassador. He
stepped into the corridor, and they cleared for him a little
respectful zone of floor. He looked about him coldly. " It seems
quite a general dishevelment. The Sophomores display an
energy in the halls which I do not detect in the class room." A
feeble murmur of appreciation arose from the outskirts of the
throng. While he had been speaking several remote groups of
battling men had been violently signaled and suppressed by
other students. The professor gazed into terraces of faces that
were still inflamed. " I needn't say that I am surprised," he
remarked in the accepted rhetoric of his kind. He added
musingly: " There seems to be a great deal of torn linen. Who is
the young gentleman with blood on his chin?"

The throng moved restlessly. A manful silence, such as
might be in the tombs of stern and honourable knights, fell
upon the shadowed corridor. The subdued rustling had fainted
to nothing. Then out of the crowd Coke, pale and desperate,
delivered himself.

" Oh, Mr. Coke," said the professor, "I would be glad if you
would tell the gentlemen they may retire to their dormitories."
He waited while the students passed out to the campus.

The professor returned to his room for some books, and
then began his own march across the snowy
campus. The wind twisted his coat-tails fantastically, and he
was obliged to keep one hand firmly on the top of his hat.
When he arrived home he met his wife in the hall. " Look here,
Mary," he cried. She followed him into the library. " Look here,"
he said. "What is this all about? Marjory tells me she wants to
marry Rufus Coleman."

Mrs. Wainwright was a fat woman who was said to pride
herself upon being very wise and if necessary, sly. In addition
she laughed continually in an inexplicably personal way, which
apparently made everybody who heard her feel offended. Mrs.
Wainwright laughed.

"Well," said the professor, bristling, " what do you mean by
that ? "

"Oh, Harris," she replied. " Oh, Harris."

The professor straightened in his chair. " I do not see any
illumination in those remarks, Mary. I understand from
Marjory's manner that she is bent upon marrying Rufus
Coleman. She said you knew of it."

" Why, of course I knew. It was as plain---"

" Plain !" scoffed the professor. " Plain !"

Why, of course," she cried. "I knew it all along."

There was nothing in her tone which proved that she
admired the event itself. She was evidently carried away by the
triumph of her penetration. " I knew it all along," she added,
nodding.

The professor looked at her affectionately. "You knew it all
along, then, Mary? Why didn't you tell me, dear ? "

" Because you ought to have known it," she answered
blatantly.

The professor was glaring. Finally he spoke in tones of grim
reproach. "Mary, whenever you happen to know anything,
dear, it seems only a matter of partial recompense that you
should tell me."

The wife had been taught in a terrible school that she should
never invent any inexpensive retorts concerning bookworms
and so she yawed at once. "Really, Harris. Really, I didn't
suppose the affair was serious. You could have knocked me
down with a feather. Of course he has been here very often, but
then Marjory gets a great deal of attention. A great deal of
attention."
The professor had been thinking. " Rather than let my girl
marry that scalawag, I'll take you and her to Greece this winter
with the class. Separation. It is a sure cure that has the
sanction of antiquity."

"Well," said Mrs. Wainwright, "you know best, Harris. You
know best." It was a common remark with her, and it probably
meant either approbation or disapprobation if it did not mean
simple discretion.







CHAPTER III.

THERE had been a babe with no arms born in one of the
western counties of Massachusetts. In place of upper limbs the
child had growing from its chest a pair of fin-like hands, mere
bits of skin-covered bone. Furthermore, it had only one eye.
This phenomenon lived four days, but the news of the birth
had travelled up this country road and through that village until
it reached the ears of the editor of the Michaelstown Tribune.
He was also a correspondent of the New York Eclipse. On the
third day he appeared at the home of the parents accompanied
by a photographer. While the latter arranged his, instrument,
the correspondent talked to the father and mother, two
coweyed and yellow-faced people who seemed to suffer a
primitive fright of the strangers. Afterwards as the
correspondent and the photographer were climbing into their
buggy, the mother crept furtively down to the gate and asked,
in a foreigner's dialect, if they would send her a copy of the
photograph. The correspondent carelessly indulgent, promised
it. As the buggy swung away, the father came from behind an
apple tree, and the two semi-humans watched it with its burden
of glorious strangers until it rumbled across
the bridge and disappeared. The correspondent was elate; he
told the photographer that the Eclipse would probably pay fifty
dollars for the article and the photograph.

The office of the New York Eclipse was at the top of the immense
building on Broadway. It was a sheer mountain to the heights of
which the interminable thunder of the streets arose faintly. The
Hudson was a broad path of silver in the distance. Its edge was
marked by the tracery of sailing ships' rigging and by the huge
and many-coloured stacks of ocean liners. At the foot of the
cliff lay City Hall Park. It seemed no larger than a quilt. The
grey walks patterned the snow-covering into triangles and ovals
and upon them many tiny people scurried here and there, without
sound, like a fish at the bottom of a pool. It was only the
vehicles that sent high, unmistakable, the deep bass of their
movement. And yet after listening one seemed to hear a singular
murmurous note, a pulsation, as if the crowd made noise by its
mere living, a mellow hum of the eternal strife. Then suddenly
out of the deeps might ring a human voice, a newsboy shout
perhaps, the cry of a  faraway jackal at night.

From the level of the ordinary roofs, combined in many
plateaus, dotted with short iron chimneys from which curled
wisps of steam, arose other mountains like the Eclipse
Building. They were great peaks,  ornate, glittering with
paint or polish. Northward they subsided to sun-crowned ranges.

From some of the windows of the Eclipse office
dropped the walls of a terrible chasm in the darkness of which
could be seen vague struggling figures. Looking down into this
appalling crevice one discovered only the tops of hats and
knees which in spasmodic jerks seemed to touch the rims of the
hats. The scene represented some weird fight or dance or
carouse. It was not an exhibition of men hurrying along a
narrow street.

It was good to turn one's eyes from that place to the vista of
the city's splendid reaches, with spire and spar shining in the
clear atmosphere and the marvel of the Jersey shore, pearl-
misted or brilliant with detail. From this height the sweep of a
snow-storm was defined and majestic. Even a slight summer
shower, with swords of lurid yellow sunlight piercing its edges
as if warriors were contesting every foot of its advance, was
from the Eclipse office something so
inspiring that the chance pilgrim felt a sense of exultation as if
from this peak he was surveying the worldwide war of the
elements and life. The staff of the Eclipse usually worked
without coats and amid the smoke from pipes.

To one of the editorial chambers came a photograph and an
article from Michaelstown, Massachusetts. A boy placed the
packet and many others upon the desk of a young man who
was standing before a window and
thoughtfully drumming upon the pane. He turned at the
thudding of the packets upon his desk. " Blast you," he
remarked amiably. " Oh, I guess it won't hurt you to work,"
answered the boy, grinning with a comrade's Insolence. Baker,
an assistant editor for the Sunday paper, took scat at his desk
and began the task of examining the packets. His face could not
display any particular interest because he had been at the same
work for nearly a fortnight.

The first long envelope he opened was from a woman.
There was a neat little manuscript accompanied by a letter
which explained that the writer was a widow who was trying to
make her living by her pen and who, further, hoped that the
generosity of the editor of the Eclipse would lead him to give
her article the opportunity which she was sure it deserved. She
hoped that the editor would pay her as well as possible for it, as
she needed the money greatly. She added that her brother was
a reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel and he had declared that
her literary style was excellent.
Baker really did not read this note. His vast experience of a
fortnight had enabled him to detect its kind in two glances. He
unfolded the manuscript, looked at it woodenly and then tossed
it with the letter to the top of his desk, where it lay with the
other corpses. None could think of widows in Arkansas,
ambitious from the praise of the reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel,
waiting for a crown of literary glory and money. In the next
envelope a man using the note-paper of a Boston journal
begged to know if the accompanying article would be
acceptable; if not it was to be kindly returned in the enclosed
stamped envelope. It was a humourous essay on trolley cars.
Adventuring through the odd scraps that were come to the
great mill, Baker paused occasionally to relight his pipe.

As he went through envelope after envelope, the desks
about him gradually were occupied by young men who entered
from the hall with their faces still red from the cold of the
streets. For the most part they bore the unmistakable stamp of
the American college. They had that confident poise which is
easily brought from the athletic field. Moreover, their clothes
were quite in the way of being of the newest fashion. There was
an air of precision about their cravats and linen. But on the
other hand there might be with them some indifferent westerner
who was obliged to resort to irregular means and harangue
startled shop-keepers in order to provide himself with collars of
a strange kind. He was usually very quick and brave of eye and
noted for his inability to perceive a distinction between his own
habit and the habit of others, his western character preserving
itself inviolate amid a confusion of manners.

The men, coming one and one, or two and two, flung
badinage to all corners of the room. Afterward, as they wheeled
from time to time in their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other
with the utmost good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and
riddling personalities with the quaint and cynical humour of a
newspaper office. Throughout this banter, it was strange to
note how infrequently the men smiled, particularly when
directly engaged in an encounter.

A wide door opened into another apartment where were
many little slanted tables, each under an electric globe with a
green shade. Here a curly-headed scoundrel with a corncob
pipe was hurling paper balls the size of apples at the head of an
industrious man who, under these difficulties, was trying to
draw a picture of an awful wreck with ghastly-faced sailors
frozen in the rigging. Near this pair a lady was challenging a
German artist who resembled Napoleon III. with having been
publicly drunk at a music hall on the previous night. Next to the
great gloomy corridor of this sixteenth floor was a little office
presided over by an austere boy, and here waited in enforced
patience a little dismal band of people who wanted to see the
Sunday editor.

Baker took a manuscript and after glancing about the room,
walked over to a man at another desk,
Here is something that. I think might do," he said.
The man at the desk read the first two pages. " But where is the
photogragh " " he asked then. "There should be a photograph
with this thing."

" Oh, I forgot," said Baker. He brought from his desk a
photograph of the babe that had been born lacking arms and
one eye. Baker's superior braced a knee against his desk and
settled back to a judicial attitude. He took the photograph and
looked at it impassively. " Yes," he said, after a time, " that's a
pretty good thing. You better show that to Coleman when he
comes in."

In the little office where the dismal band waited, there had
been a sharp hopeful stir when Rufus Coleman, the Sunday
editor, passed rapidly from door to door and vanished within
the holy precincts. It had evidently been in the minds of some
to accost him then, but his eyes did not turn once in their
direction. It was as if he had not seen them. Many experiences
had taught him that the proper manner of passing through this
office was at a blind gallop.

The dismal band turned then upon the austere office boy.
Some demanded with terrible dignity that he should take in
their cards at once. Others sought to ingratiate themselves by
smiles of tender friendliness. He for his part employed what we
would have called his knowledge of men and women upon the
group, and in consequence blundered and bungled vividly,
freezing with a glance an annoyed and importunate Arctic
explorer who was come to talk of illustrations
for an article that had been lavishly paid for in advance. The
hero might have thought he was again in the northern seas. At
the next moment the boy was treating almost courteously a
German from the cast side who wanted the Eclipse to print a grand full
page advertising description of his invention, a gun which was
supposed to have a range of forty miles and to be able to
penetrate anything with equanimity and joy. The gun, as a
matter of fact, had once been induced to go off when it had
hurled itself passionately upon its back, incidentally breaking
its inventor's leg. The projectile had wandered some four
hundred yards seaward, where it dug a hole in the water which
was really a menace to navigation. Since then there had been
nothing tangible save the inventor, in splints and out of splints,
as the fortunes of science decreed. In short, this office boy
mixed his business in the perfect manner of an underdone lad
dealing with matters too large for him, and throughout he
displayed the pride and assurance of a god.

As Coleman crossed the large office his face still wore the
stern expression which he invariably used to carry him
unmolested through the ranks of the dismal band. As he was
removing his London overcoat he addressed the imperturbable
back of one of his staff, who had a desk against the opposite
wall. " Has Hasskins sent in that drawing of the mine accident
yet? " The man did not lift his head from his work-, but he
answered at once: " No; not yet." Coleman was laying his hat
on a chair. " Well, why hasn't he ? " he demanded. He glanced
toward the door of the room in which the curly-headed
scoundrel with the corncob pipe was still hurling paper balls at
the man who was trying to invent the postures of dead
mariners frozen in the rigging. The office boy came timidly from
his post and informed Coleman of the waiting people. " All
right," said the editor. He dropped into his chair and began to
finger his letters, which had been neatly opened and placed in a
little stack by a boy. Baker came in with the photograph of the
miserable babe.

It was publicly believed that the Sunday staff of the Eclipse
must have a kind of aesthetic delight in pictures of this kind,
but Coleman's face betrayed no emotion as he looked at this
specimen. He lit a fresh cigar, tilted his chair and surveyed it
with a cold and stony stare. " Yes, that's all right," he said
slowly. There seemed to be no affectionate relation between
him and this picture. Evidently he was weighing its value as a
morsel to be flung to a ravenous public, whose wolf-like
appetite, could only satisfy itself upon mental entrails,
abominations. As for himself, he seemed to be remote, exterior.
It was a matter of the Eclipse business.

Suddenly Coleman became executive. " Better give
it to Schooner and tell him to make a half-page---or, no, send
him in here and I'll tell him my idea. How's the article? Any
good? Well, give it to Smith to rewrite."

An artist came from the other room and presented for
inspection his drawing of the seamen dead in the rigging of the
wreck, a company of grizzly and horrible figures, bony-fingered,
shrunken and with awful eyes. " Hum," said Coleman, after a
prolonged study, " that's all right. That's good, Jimmie. But
you'd better work 'em up around the eyes a little more." The
office boy was deploying in the distance, waiting for the
correct moment to present some cards and names.

The artist was cheerfully taking away his corpses when
Coleman hailed him. " Oh, Jim, let me see that thing again, will
you? Now, how about this spar? This don't look right to me."

" It looks right to me," replied the artist, sulkily.

" But, see. It's going to take up half a page. Can't you
change it somehow "

How am I going to change it?" said the other, glowering at
Coleman. " That's the way it ought to be. How am I going to
change it? That's the way it ought to be."

" No, it isn't at all," said Coleman. "You've got a spar
sticking out of the main body of the drawing in a way that will
spoil the look of the whole page."

The artist was a man of remarkable popular reputation and
he was very stubborn and conceited of it, constantly making
himself unbearable with covert, threats that if he was not
delicately placated at all points, he would freight his genius
over to the office of the great opposition journal.

" That's the way it ought to be," he repeated, in a tone at
once sullen and superior. "The spar is all right. I can't rig spars
on ships just to suit you."

" And I can't give up the whole paper to your accursed spars,
either," said Coleman, with animation. " Don't you see you use
about a third of a page with this spar sticking off into space?
Now, you were always so clever, Jimmie, in adapting yourself to
the page. Can't you shorten it, or cut it off, or something? Or,
break it-that's the thing. Make it a broken spar dangling down.
See? "

" Yes, I s'pose I could do that," said the artist, mollified by a
thought of the ease with which he could make the change, and
mollified, too, by the brazen tribute to a part of his cleverness.

" Well, do it, then," said the Sunday editor, turning abruptly
away. The artist, with head high, walked majestically back to
the other room. Whereat the curly-headed one immediately
resumed the rain of paper balls upon him. The office boy came
timidly to Coleman and suggested the presence of the people
in the outer office. " Let them wait until I read my
mail," said Coleman. He shuffled the pack of letters
indifferently through his hands. Suddenly he came upon a little
grey envelope. He opened it at once and scanned its contents
with the speed of his craft. Afterward he laid it down before him
on the desk and surveyed it with a cool and musing smile.
"So?" he remarked. " That's the case, is it?"

He presently swung around in his chair, and for a time held
the entire attention of the men at the various desks. He outlined
to them again their various parts in the composition of the next
great Sunday edition. In a few brisk sentences he set a complex
machine in proper motion. His men no longer thrilled with
admiration at the precision with which he grasped each obligation
of the campaign toward a successful edition. They had grown
to accept it as they accepted his hat or his London clothes. At
this time his face was lit with something of the self-contained
enthusiasm of a general. Immediately afterward he arose and
reached for his coat and hat.

The office boy, coming circuitously forward, presented him
with some cards and also with a scrap of paper upon which was
scrawled a long and semicoherent word. " What are these ? "
grumbled Coleman.

"They are waiting outside," answered the boy, with
trepidation. It was part of the law that the lion of the ante-room
should cringe like a cold monkey,
more or less, as soon as he was out of his private jungle. "Oh,
Tallerman," cried the Sunday editor, "here's this Arctic man
come to arrange about his illustration. I wish you'd go and talk
it over with him." By chance he picked up the scrap of paper
with its cryptic word. " Oh," he said, scowling at the office boy.
"Pity you can't remember that fellow. If you can't remember
faces any better than that you should be a detective. Get out
now and tell him to go to the devil." The wilted slave turned at
once, but Coleman hailed him. " Hold on. Come to think of it, I
will see this idiot. Send him in," he commanded, grimly.

Coleman lapsed into a dream over the sheet of grey note
paper. Presently, a middle-aged man, a palpable German, came
hesitatingly into the room and bunted among the desks as
unmanageably as a tempest-tossed scow. Finally he was
impatiently towed in the right direction. He came and stood at
Coleman's elbow and waited nervously for the engrossed man
to raise his eyes. It was plain that this interview meant
important things to him. Somehow on his commonplace
countenance was to be found the expression of a dreamer, a
fashioner of great and absurd projects, a fine, tender fool. He
cast hopeful and reverent glances at the man who was deeply
contemplative of the grey note. He evidently believed himself
on the threshold of a triumph of some kind, and he awaited
his fruition with a joy that was only made sharper by
the usual human suspicion of coming events.

Coleman glanced up at last and saw his visitor.

" Oh, it's you, is it ? " he remarked icily, bending upon the
German the stare of a tyrant. "So you've come again, have you? "
He wheeled in his chair until he could fully display a
contemptuous, merciless smile. "Now, Mr.
What's-your-name, you've called here to see me about twenty
times already and at last I am going to say something definite
about your invention." His listener's face, which had worn for a
moment a look of fright and bewilderment, gladdened swiftly to
a gratitude that seemed the edge of an outburst of tears. " Yes,"
continued Coleman, " I am going to say something definite. I am
going to say that it is the most imbecile bit of nonsense that has
come within the range of my large newspaper experience. It is
simply the aberration of a rather remarkable lunatic. It is no good;
it is not worth the price of a cheese sandwich. I understand
that its one feat has been to break your leg; if it ever goes off
again, persuade it to break your neck. And now I want you to
take this nursery rhyme of yours and get out. And don't ever
come here again. Do You understand ? You understand, do you ?"
He arose and bowed in courteous dismissal.

The German was regarding him  with the surprise
and horror of a youth shot mortally. He could not
find his tongue for a moment. Ultimately he gasped : "But,
Mister Editor "--Coleman interrupted him tigerishly. " You heard
what I said? Get out." The man bowed his head and went
slowly toward the door.

Coleman placed the little grey note in his breast pocket. He
took his hat and top coat, and evading the dismal band by a
shameless manoeuvre, passed through the halls to the entrance
to the elevator shaft. He heard a movement behind him and saw
that the German was also waiting for the elevator.
Standing in the gloom of the corridor, Coleman felt the
mournful owlish eyes of the German resting upon him. He took
a case from his pocket and elaborately lit a cigarette. Suddenly
there was a flash of light and a cage of bronze, gilt and steel
dropped, magically from above. Coleman yelled: " Down!" A
door flew open. Coleman, followed by the German, stepped
upon the elevator. " Well, Johnnie," he said cheerfully to the
lad who operated this machine, "is business good?" "Yes, sir,
pretty good," answered the boy, grinning. The little cage sank
swiftly; floor after floor seemed to be rising with marvellous
speed; the whole building was winging straight into the sky.
There were soaring lights, figures and the opalescent glow of
ground glass doors marked with black inscriptions. Other lifts
were springing heavenward. All the lofty corridors rang with
cries. " Up! " Down! " " Down! " " Up! " The boy's hand
grasped a lever and his machine obeyed his lightest movement
with sometimes an unbalancing swiftness.

Coleman discoursed briskly to the youthful attendant. Once
he turned and regarded with a quick stare of insolent
annoyance the despairing countenance of the German whose
eyes had never left him. When the elevator arrived at the
ground floor, Coleman departed with the outraged air of a man
who for a time had been compelled to occupy a cell in company
with a harmless spectre.

He walked quickly away. Opposite a corner of the City Hall
he was impelled to look behind him. Through the hordes of
people with cable cars marching like panoplied elephants, he
was able to distinguish the German, motionless and gazing after
him. Coleman laughed. " That's a comic old boy," he said, to
himself.

In the grill-room of a Broadway hotel he was obliged to wait
some minutes for the fulfillment of his orders and he spent the
time in reading and studying the little grey note. When his
luncheon was served he ate with an expression of morose
dignity.



CHAPTER IV.

MARJORY paused again at her father's door. After hesitating
in the original way she entered the library. Her father almost
represented an emblematic figure, seated upon a column of
books. " Well," he cried. Then, seeing it was Marjory, he
changed his tone. " Ah, under the circumstances, my dear, I
admit your privilege of interrupting me at any hour of the day.
You have important business with me." His manner was
satanically indulgent.

The girl fingered a book. She turned the leaves in absolute
semblance of a person reading. "Rufus Coleman called."

"Indeed," said the professor.

"And I've come to you, father, before seeing him."

The professor was silent for a time. " Well, Marjory," he said
at last, "what do you want me to say?" He spoke very
deliberately. " I am sure this is a singular situation. Here appears
the man I formally forbid you to marry. I am sure I do not know
what I am to say."

" I wish to see him," said the girl.

"You wish to see him?" enquired the professor. "You wish
to see him " Marjory, I may as well tell you now that with
all the books and plays I've read, I really
don't know how the obdurate father should conduct himself.
He is always pictured as an exceedingly dense gentleman with
white whiskers, who does all the unintelligent things in the
plot. You and I are going to play no drama, are we, Marjory? I
admit that I have white whiskers, and I am an obdurate father. I
am, as you well may say, a very obdurate father. You are not to
marry Rufus Coleman. You understand the rest of the matter.
He is here ; you want to see him. What will you say to him
when you see him? "

" I will say that you refuse to let me marry him, father and-"
She hesitated a moment before she lifted her eyes fully and
formidably to her father's face. " And that I shall marry him
anyhow."

The professor did not cavort when this statement came from
his daughter. He nodded and then passed into a period of
reflection. Finally he asked: "But when? That is the point.
When?"

The girl made a sad gesture.  "I don't know. I don't know.
Perhaps when you come to know Rufus better-"

" Know him better. Know that rapscallion better? Why, I
know him much better than he knows himself. I know him too
well. Do you think I am talking offhand about this affair? Do
you think I am talking without proper information?"

Marjory made no reply.

"Well," said the professor, "you may see Coleman on
condition that you inform him at once that I forbid your
marriage to him. I don't understand at all how to manage these
situations. I don't know what to do. I suppose I should go
myself and-No, you can't see him, Majory."

Still the girl made no reply. Her head sank forward and she
breathed a trifle heavily.
"Marjory," cried the professor, it is impossible that you
should think so much of this man." He arose and went to his
daughter. " Marjory, many wise children have been guided by
foolish fathers, but we both suspect that no foolish child has
ever been guided by a wise father. Let us change it. I present
myself to you as a wise father. Follow my wishes in this affair
and you will be at least happier than if you marry this wretched
Coleman."

She answered: " He is waiting for me."

The professor turned abruptly from her and dropped into his
chair at the table. He resumed a grip on his pen. " Go," he said,
wearily. " Go. But if you have a remnant of sense, remember
what I have said to you. Go." He waved his hand in a dismissal
that was slightly scornful. " I hoped you would have a minor
conception of what you were doing. It seems a pity." Drooping
in tears, the girl slowly left the room.

Coleman had an idea that he had occupied the chair for
several months. He gazed about at the pictures and the odds
and ends of a drawing-room in an attempt to take an interest in
them. The great garlanded paper shade over the piano lamp
consoled his impatience in a mild degree because he knew that
Marjory had made it. He noted the clusters of cloth violets
which she had pinned upon the yellow paper and he dreamed
over the fact. He was able to endow this shade with certain
qualities of sentiment that caused his stare to become almost a
part of an intimacy, a communion. He looked as if he could
have unburdened his soul to this shade over the piano lamp.

Upon the appearance of Marjory he sprang up and came
forward rapidly. " Dearest," he murmured, stretching out both
hands. She gave him one set of fingers with chilling
convention. She said something which he understood to be "
Good-afternoon." He started as if the woman before him had
suddenly drawn a knife. " Marjory," he cried, "what is the
matter?." They walked together toward a window. The girl
looked at him in polite enquiry. " Why? " she said. " Do I seem
strange ? " There was a moment's silence while he gazed into
her eyes, eyes full of innocence and tranquillity. At last she
tapped her foot upon the floor in expression of mild impatience.
" People do not like to be asked what is the matter
when there is nothing the matter. What do you mean ? "

Coleman's face had gradually hardened. " Well, what is
wrong? " he demanded, abruptly. "What has happened? What
is it, Marjory ? "

She raised her glance in a perfect reality of wonder. "What is
wrong? What has happened? How absurd! Why nothing, of
course." She gazed out of the window. " Look," she added,
brightly, the students are rolling somebody in a drift. Oh,
the poor Man ! "

Coleman, now wearing a bewildered air, made some pretense
of being occupied with the scene. " Yes," he said, ironically.
"Very interesting, indeed."

" Oh," said Marjory, suddenly, " I forgot to tell you. Father
is going to take mother and me to Greece this winter with him
and the class."

Coleman replied at once. " Ah, indeed ? That will be jolly."

"Yes. Won't it be charming?"

" I don't doubt it," he replied. His composure May have
displeased her, for she glanced at him furtively and in a way
that denoted surprise, perhaps.

"Oh, of course," she said, in a glad voice. " It will be more
fun. We expect to nave a fine time. There is such a n ice lot of
boys going Sometimes father
chooses these dreadfully studious ones. But this time he
acts as if he knew precisely how to make up a party."

He reached for her hand and grasped it vise-like. "Marjory," he
breathed, passionately, " don't treat me so. Don't treat me-"

She wrenched her hand from him in regal indignation. " One
or two rings make it uncomfortable for the hand that is grasped
by an angry gentleman." She held her fingers and gazed as if
she expected to find them mere debris. " I am sorry that you are
not interested in the students rolling that man in the snow. It is
the greatest scene our quiet life can afford."

He was regarding her as a judge faces a lying culprit. " I
know," he said, after a pause. " Somebody has been telling you
some stories. You have been hearing something about me."

" Some stories ? " she enquired. " Some stories about you?
What do you mean? Do you mean that I remember stories I may
happen to hear about people? "

There was another pause and then Coleman's face flared red.
He beat his hand violently upon a table. " Good God, Marjory!
Don't make a fool of me. Don't make this kind of a fool of me, at
any rate. Tell me what you mean. Explain-"

She laughed at him. " Explain? Really, your vocabulary is
getting extensive, but it is dreadfully awkward to ask people to
explain when there is nothing to explain."

He glanced at her, " I know as well as you do that your
father is taking you to Greece in order to get rid of me."

" And do people have to go to Greece in order to get rid of
you? " she asked, civilly. " I think you are getting excited."

" Marjory," he began, stormily.
She raised her hand. " Hush," she said, "there is somebody
coming." A bell had rung. A maid entered the room. " Mr.
Coke," she said. Marjory nodded. In the interval of waiting,
Coleman gave the girl a glance that mingled despair with rage
and pride. Then Coke burst with half-tamed rapture into the
room. " Oh, Miss Wainwright," he almost shouted, " I can't tell
you how glad I am. I just heard to-day you were going. Imagine
it. It will be more--oh, how are you Coleman, how are you " "

Marjory welcomed the new-comer with a cordiality that might
not have thrilled Coleman with pleasure. They took chairs that
formed a triangle and one side of it vibrated with talk. Coke and
Marjory engaged in a tumultuous conversation concerning the
prospective trip to Greece. The Sunday editor, as remote as if
the apex of his angle was the top of a hill, could only study the
girl's clear profile. The youthful voices of the two others rang
like bells. He did not scowl at Coke; he merely looked at him as
if be gently disdained his mental calibre. In fact all the talk
seemed to tire him; it was childish; as for him, he apparently found
this babble almost insupportable.

" And, just think of the camel rides we'll have," cried Coke.

" Camel rides," repeated Coleman, dejectedly. " My dear
Coke."

Finally he arose like an old man climbing from a sick bed.
"Well, I am afraid I must go, Miss Wainwright." Then he said
affectionately to Coke: " Good-bye, old boy. I hope you will
have a good time."

Marjory walked with him to the door. He shook her hand in a
friendly fashion. " Good-bye, Marjory,' he said. " Perhaps it
may happen that I shan't see you again before you start for
Greece and so I had best bid you God-speed---or whatever the
term is now. You will have a charming time; Greece must be a
delightful place. Really, I envy you, Marjory. And now my dear
child "-his voice grew brotherly, filled with the patronage of
generous fraternal love, " although I may never see you again
let me wish you fifty as happy years as this last one has been
for me." He smiled frankly into her eyes; then dropping her
hand, he went away.

Coke renewed his tempest of talk as Marjory turned toward
him. But after a series of splendid eruptions, whose red fire
illumined all of ancient and modem Greece, he too went away.

The professor was in his. library apparently absorbed in a
book when a tottering pale-faced woman appeared to him and,
in her course toward a couch in a corner of the room, described
almost a semi-circle. She flung herself face downward. A thick
strand of hair swept over her shoulder. " Oh, my heart is
broken! My heart is broken! "

The professor arose, grizzled and thrice-old with pain. He
went to the couch, but he found himself a handless, fetless
man. " My poor child," he said. " My poor child." He remained
listening stupidly to her convulsive sobbing. A ghastly kind of
solemnity came upon the room.

Suddenly the girl lifted herself and swept the strand of hair
away from her face. She looked at the professor with the wide-
open dilated eyes of one who still sleeps. " Father," she said in
a hollow voice, " he don't love me. He don't love me. He don't
love me. at all. You were right, father." She began to laugh.

"Marjory," said the professor, trembling. "Be quiet, child. Be
quiet."

" But," she said, " I thought he loved me--I was sure of it. But
it don't-don't matter. I--I can't get over it. Women-women, the-
but it don't matter."

" Marjory," said the professor. " Marjory, my poor
daughter."

She did not heed his appeal, but continued in a dull whisper.
" He was playing with me. He was--was-was flirting with me.
He didn't care when I told him--I told him--
I was going-going away." She turned her face wildly to the
cushions again. Her young shoulders shook as if they might
break. " Wo-men-women-they always----"







CHAPTER V.

By a strange mishap of management the train which bore
Coleman back toward New York was fetched into an obscure
side-track of some lonely region and there compelled to bide a
change of fate. The engine wheezed and sneezed like a paused
fat man. The lamps in the cars pervaded a stuffy odor of smoke
and oil. Coleman examined his case and found only one cigar.
Important brakemen proceeded rapidly along the aisles, and
when they swung open the doors, a polar wind circled the legs
of the passengers. " Well, now, what is all this for? " demanded
Coleman, furiously. " I want to get back to New York."

The conductor replied with sarcasm, " Maybe you think I'm
stuck on it " I ain't running the road. I'm running this train, and I
run it according to orders." Amid the dismal comforts of the
waiting cars, Coleman felt all the profound misery of the
rebuffed true lover. He had been sentenced, he thought, to a
penal servitude of the heart, as he watched the dusky, vague
ribbons of smoke come from the lamps and felt to his knees the
cold winds from the brakemen's busy flights. When the train
started with a whistle and a jolt, he was elate as if in his
abjection his beloved's hand had reached to him from the clouds.

When he had arrived in New York, a cab rattled him to an
uptown hotel with speed. In the restaurant he first ordered a
large bottle of champagne. The last of the wine he finished in
sombre mood like an unbroken and defiant man who chews the
straw that litters his prison house. During his dinner he was
continually sending out messenger boys. He was arranging a
poker party. Through a window he watched the beautiful
moving life of upper Broadway at night, with its crowds and
clanging cable cars and its electric signs, mammoth and
glittering, like the jewels of a giantess.

Word was brought to him that the poker players were
arriving. He arose joyfully, leaving his cheese. In the broad hall,
occupied mainly by miscellaneous people and actors, all deep
in leather chairs, he found some of his friends waiting. They
trooped up stairs to Coleman's rooms, where as a preliminary,
Coleman began to hurl books and papers from the table to the
floor. A boy came with drinks. Most of the men, in order to
prepare for the game, removed their coats and cuffs and drew
up the sleeves of their shirts. The electric globes shed a
blinding light upon the table. The sound of clinking chips
arose; the elected banker spun the cards, careless and
dexterous.

Later, during a pause of dealing, Coleman said:
" Billie, what kind of a lad is that young Coke up at Washurst?"
He addressed an old college friend.

" Oh, you mean the Sophomore Coke? " asked the friend.
" Seems a decent sort of a fellow. I don't know. Why? "

"Well, who is he? Where does he come from? What do you
know about him? "

" He's one of those Ohio Cokes-regular thing-- father
millionaire-used to be a barber-good old boy -why? "

" Nothin'," said Coleman, looking at his cards. " I know the
lad. I thought he was a good deal of an ass. I wondered who
his people were."

" Oh, his people are all right-in one way. Father owns rolling
mills. Do you raise it, Henry? Well, in order to make vice
abhorrent to the young, I'm obliged to raise back."

" I'll see it," observed Coleman, slowly pushing forward two
blue chips. Afterward he reached behind him and took another
glass of wine.

To the others Coleman seemed to have something bitter
upon his mind. He played poker quietly, steadfastly, and,
without change of eye, following the mathematical religion of
the game. Outside of the play he was savage, almost
insupportable.
" What's the matter with you, Rufus ? " said his old college
friend. " Lost your job? Girl gone back on you? You're a
hell of -a host. We don't get any. thing but insults and drinks."

Late at night Coleman began to lose steadily. In the
meantime he drank glass after glass of wine. Finally he made
reckless bets on a mediocre hand and an opponent followed
him thoughtfully bet by bet, undaunted, calm, absolutely
without emotion. Coleman lost; he hurled down his cards. "
Nobody but a damned fool would have seen that last raise on
anything less than a full hand."

" Steady. Come off. What's wrong with you, Rufus ? " cried
his guests.

" You're not drunk, are you ? " said his old college friend,
puritanically.

" 'Drunk' ?" repeated Coleman.

" Oh, say," cried a man, " let's play cards. What's all this
gabbling ? "

It was when a grey, dirty light of dawn evaded the thick
curtains and fought on the floor with the feebled electric glow
that Coleman, in the midst of play, lurched his chest heavily
upon the table. Some chips rattled to the floor. " I'll call you,"
he murmured, sleepily.

" Well," replied a man, sternly, " three kings."

The other players with difficulty extracted five cards from
beneath Coleman's pillowed head. " Not a pair! Come, come,
this won't do. Oh, let's stop playing. This is the rottenest game I
ever sat in.    Let's go home. Why don't you put him. to bed, Billie?"

When Coleman awoke next morning, he looked back upon
the poker game as something that had transpired in previous
years. He dressed and went down to the grill-room. For his
breakfast he ordered some eggs on toast and a pint of
champagne. A privilege of liberty belonged to a certain Irish
waiter, and this waiter looked at him, grinning. "Maybe you
had a pretty lively time last night, Mr Coleman? "

" Yes, Pat," answered Coleman, " I did. It was all because of
an unrequited affection, Patrick." The man stood near, a napkin
over his arm. Coleman went on impressively. " The ways of the
modern lover are strange. Now, I, Patrick, am a modern lover,
and when, yesterday, the dagger of disappointment was driven
deep into my heart, I immediately played poker as hard as I
could and incidentally got loaded. This is the modern point of
view. I understand on good authority that in old times lovers
used to. languish. That is probably a lie, but at any rate we do
not, in these times, languish to any great extent. We get drunk.
Do you understand, Patrick? "
The waiter was used to a harangue at Coleman's breakfast
time. He placed his hand over his mouth and giggled. "Yessir."

" Of course," continued Coleman, thoughtfully. " It might be
pointed out by uneducated persons that
it is difficult to maintain a high standard of drunkenness for the
adequate length of time, but in the series of experiments which
I am about to make I am sure I can easily prove them to be in
the wrong."

" I am sure, sir," said the waiter, " the young ladies would
not like to be hearing you talk this way."

" Yes; no doubt, no doubt. The young ladies have still quite
medieval ideas. They don't understand. They still prefer lovers
to languish."

" At any rate, sir, I don't see that your heart is sure
enough broken. You seem to take it very easy. "

" Broken! " cried Coleman. " Easy? Man, my heart is in
fragments. Bring me another small bottle."







CHAPTER VI.

Six weeks later, Coleman went to the office of the proprietor
of the Eclipse. Coleman was one of those
smooth-shaven old-young men who wear upon some occasions
a singular air of temperance and purity. At these times, his
features lost their quality of worldly shrewdness and endless
suspicion and bloomed as the face of some innocent boy. It
then would be hard to tell that he had ever encountered even
such a crime as a lie or a cigarette. As he walked into the
proprietor's office he was a perfect semblance of a fine,
inexperienced youth. People usually concluded this change was
due to a Turkish bath or some other expedient of recuperation,
but it was due probably to the power of a physical
characteristic.

" Boss in ? " said Coleman.

" Yeh," said the secretary, jerking his thumb toward an inner
door. In his private office, Sturgeon sat on the edge of the table
dangling one leg and dreamily surveying the wall. As Coleman
entered he looked up quickly. "Rufus," he cried, " you're just
the man I wanted to see. I've got a scheme. A great scheme."
He slid from the table and began to pace briskly to
and fro, his hands deep in his trousers' pockets, his chin sunk
in his collar, his light blue eyes afire with interest. " Now listen.
This is immense. The Eclipse enlists a battalion of men to go to
Cuba and fight the Spaniards under its own flag-the Eclipse flag.
Collect trained officers from here and there-enlist every young
devil we see-drill 'em--best rifles-loads of ammunition-
provisions-staff of doctors and nurses -a couple of dynamite
guns-everything complete best in the world. Now, isn't that
great ? What's the matter with that now ? Eh? Eh? Isn't that
great? It's great, isn't it? Eh? Why, my boy, we'll free-"

Coleman did not seem to ignite. " I have been arrested four
or five times already on fool matters connected with the
newspaper business," he observed, gloomily, " but I've never
yet been hung. I think your scheme is a beauty."

Sturgeon paused in astonishment. " Why, what happens to
be the matter with you ? What are you kicking about ? "

Coleman made a slow gesture. " I'm tired," he answered. " I
need a vacation."

"Vacation!" cried Sturgeon. "Why don't you take one then ? "

" That's what I've come to see you about. I've had a pretty
heavy strain on me for three years now, and I want to get a
little rest."

" Well, who in thunder has been keeping you from it? It
hasn't been me."

" I know it hasn't been you, but, of course, I wanted the
paper to go and I wanted to have my share in its success, but
now that everything is all right I think I might go away for a
time if you don't mind."

" Mind! " exclaimed Sturgeon falling into his chair and
reaching for his check book. "Where do you want to go? How
long do you want to be gone? How much money do you want ?"

" I don't want very much. And as for where I want to go, I
thought I might like to go to Greece for a while."

Sturgeon had been writing a check. He poised his pen in the
air and began to laugh. " That's a queer place to go for a rest.
Why, the biggest war of modern times--a war that may involve
all Europe-is likely to start there at any moment. You are not
likely to get any rest in Greece."

" I know that," answered Coleman. " I know there is likely to
be a war there. But I think that is exactly what would rest me. I
would like to report the war."

"You are a queer bird," answered Sturgeon deeply fascinated
with this new idea. He had apparently forgotten his vision of a
Cuban volunteer battalion. " War correspondence is about the
most original medium for a rest I ever heard of."

"Oh, it may seem funny, but really, any change will be good
for me now. I've been whacking at this old Sunday edition until
I'm sick of it, and some,. times I wish the Eclipse was in hell."

That's all right," laughed the proprietor of the
Eclipse. " But I still don't see how you 'are going to get any
vacation out of a war that will upset the whole of Europe. But
that's your affair. If you want to become the chief
correspondent in the field in case of any such war, why, of
course, I would be glad to have you. I couldn't get anybody
better. But I don't see where your vacation comes in."

" I'll take care of that," answered Coleman. " When I take a
vacation I want to take it my own way, and I think this will be a
vacation because it will be different -don't you see-different ? "

" No, I don't see any sense in it, but if you think that is the
way that suits you, why, go ahead. How much money do you
want ? "

" I don't want much. just enough to see me through nicely."

Sturgeon scribbled on his check book and then ripped a
check from it. " Here's a thousand dollars. Will that do you to
start with? "

" That's plenty."

"When do you want to start ? "

" To-morrow."

"Oh," said Sturgeon. " You're in a hurry." This
impetuous manner of exit from business seemed to appeal to
him. " To-morrow," he repeated smiling. In reality he was some
kind of a poet using his millions romantically, spending wildly
on a sentiment that might be with beauty or without beauty,
according to the momentary vacillation. The vaguely-defined
desperation in Coleman's last announcement appeared to
delight him. He grinned and placed the points of his fingers
together stretching out his legs in a careful attitude of
indifference which might even mean disapproval. " To-morrow,"
he murmured teasingly.

" By jiminy," exclaimed Coleman, ignoring the other man's
mood, " I'm sick of the whole business. I've got out a Sunday
paper once a week for three years and I feel absolutely
incapable of getting out another edition. It would be all right if
we were running on ordinary lines, but when each issue is more
or less of an attempt to beat the previous issue, it becomes
rather wearing, you know. If I can't get a vacation now I take
one later in a lunatic asylum."

" Why, I'm not objecting to your having a vacation. I'm
simply marvelling at the kind of vacation you want to take. And
'to-morrow,' too, eh ? "
" Well, it suits me," muttered Coleman, sulkily.

" Well, if it suits you, that's enough. Here's your check. Clear
out now and don't let me see you again until you are
thoroughly rested, even if it takes a year." He arose and stood
smiling. He was mightily pleased with himself. He liked to
perform in this way. He was almost seraphic as he thrust the
check for a thousand dollars toward Coleman.

Then his manner changed abruptly. " Hold on a minute. I
must think a little about this thing if you are going to manage
the correspondence. Of course it will be a long and bloody
war."

"You bet."

"The big chance is that all Europe will be dragged into it. Of
course then you would have to come out of Greece and take up
abetter position-say Vienna."

"No, I wouldn't care to do that," said Coleman positively. "I
just want to take care of the Greek end of it."

" It will be an idiotic way to take a vacation," observed
Sturgeon.

" Well, it suits me," muttered Coleman again. " I tell you
what it is-" he added suddenly. "I've got some private reasons-
see ? "

Sturgeon was radiant with joy. " Private reasons." He was
charmed by the sombre pain in Coleman's eyes and his own
ability to eject it. "Good. Go now and be blowed. I will cable
final instruction to meet you in London. As soon as you get to
Greece, cable me an account of the situation there and we will
arrange our plans." He began to laugh. " Private reasons. Come
out to dinner with me."

" I can't very well," said Coleman. " If I go tomorrow, I've
got to pack-"

But here the real tyrant appeared, emerging suddenly from
behind the curtain of sentiment, appearing like a red devil in a
pantomine. " You can't ? " snapped Sturgeon. " Nonsense----"

CHAPTER VII.

SWEEPING out from between two remote, half-submerged
dunes on which stood slender sentry light. houses, the steamer
began to roll with a gentle insinuating motion. Passengers in
their staterooms saw at rhythmical intervals the spray racing
fleetly past the portholes. The waves grappled hurriedly at the
sides of the great flying steamer and boiled discomfited astern
in a turmoil of green and white. From the tops of the enormous
funnels streamed level masses of smoke which were
immediately torn to nothing by the headlong wind. Meanwhile
as the steamer rushed into the northeast, men in caps and
ulsters comfortably paraded the decks and stewards arranged
deck chairs for the reception of various women who were
coming from their cabins with rugs.

In the smoking room, old voyagers were settling down
comfortably while new voyagers were regarding them with a
diffident respect. Among the passengers Coleman found a
number of people whom he knew, including a wholesale wine
merchant, a Chicago railway magnate and a New York
millionaire. They lived practically in the smoking room.
Necessity drove them from time to time to the salon, or to their
berths. Once indeed the millionaire was absent, from the group
while penning a short note to his wife.

When the Irish coast was sighted Coleman came on deck to
look at it. A tall young woman immediately halted in her walk
until he had stepped up to her. " Well, of all ungallant men,
Rufus Coleman, you are the star," she cried laughing and held
out her hand.

" Awfully sorry, I'm sure," he murmured. " Been playing poker
in the smoking room all voyage. Didn't have a look at the
passenger list until just now. Why didn't you send me word?"
These lies were told so modestly and sincerely that when the
girl flashed her, brilliant eyes full upon their author there was a
mixt of admiration in the indignation.

" Send you a card " I don't believe you can read,  else you
would have known I was to sail on this steamer. If I hadn't been
ill until to-day you would have seen me in the salon. I open at
the Folly Theatre next week. Dear ol' Lunnon, y' know."

" Of course, I knew you were going," said Coleman.
"But I thought you were to go later. What do you open in? "

" Fly by Night. Come walk along with me. See those two old
ladies " They've been watching for me like hawks ever since we
left New York. They expected me to flirt with every man on
board. But I've fooled them. I've been just as g-o-o-d. I had to
be."

As the pair moved toward the stern, enormous and
radiant green waves were crashing futilely after the steamer.
Ireland showed a dreary coast line to the north. A wretched
man who had crossed the Atlantic eighty-four times was
declaiming to a group of novices. A venerable banker, bundled
in rugs, was asleep in his deck chair.

" Well, Nora," said Coleman, " I hope you make a hit in
London. You deserve it if anybody does. You've worked hard."

"Worked hard," cried the girl. "I should think so. Eight years
ago I was in the rear row. Now I have the centre of the stage
whenever I want it. I made Chalmers cut out that great scene in
the second act between the queen and Rodolfo. The idea! Did
he think I would stand that ? And just because he was in love
with Clara Trotwood, too."

Coleman was dreamy. " Remember when I was dramatic man
for the Gazette and wrote the first notice ? "

" Indeed, I do," answered the girl affectionately.
" Indeed, I do, Rufus. Ah, that was a great lift. I believe that
was the first thing that had an effect on old Oliver. Before that,
he never would believe that I was any good. Give me your arm,
Rufus. Let's parade before the two old women." Coleman
glanced at her keenly. Her voice had trembled slightly. Her eyes
were lustrous as if she were about to weep.

" Good heavens," he said. " You are the same old
Nora Black. I thought you would be proud and 'aughty by this
time."

" Not to my friends," she murmured., " Not to my friends. I'm
always the same and I never forget. Rufus."

" Never forget what? " asked Coleman.

" If anybody does me a favour I never forget it as long as I
live," she answered fervently.

" Oh, you mustn't be so sentimental, Nora. You remember
that play you bought from little Ben Whipple, just because he
had once sent you some flowers in the old days when you were
poor and happened to bed sick. A sense of gratitude cost you
over eight thousand dollars that time, didn't it? " Coleman
laughed heartily.

" Oh, it wasn't the flowers at all," she interrupted seriously. "
Of course Ben was always a nice boy, but then his play was
worth a thousand dollars. That's all I gave him. I lost some more
in trying to make it go. But it was too good. That was what was
the matter. It was altogether too good for the public. I felt
awfully sorry for poor little Ben."

"Too good?" sneered Coleman. "Too good? Too
indifferently bad, you mean. My dear girl, you mustn't imagine
that you know a good play. You don't, at all."

She paused abruptly and faced him. This regal, creature
was looking at him so sternly that Coleman
felt awed for a moment as if he, were in the presence of a great
mind. " Do you mean to say that I'm not an artist ? " she asked.

Coleman remained cool. " I've never been decorated for
informing people of their own affairs," he observed, " but I
should say that you were about as much of an artist as I am."

Frowning slightly, she reflected upon this reply. Then, of a
sudden, she laughed. " There is no use in being angry with
you, Rufus. You always were a hopeless scamp. But," she
added, childishly wistful, "have you ever seen Fly by Night?
Don't you think my dance in the second act is artistic? "

" No," said Coleman, " I haven't seen Fly by Night yet, but
of course I know that you are the most beautiful dancer on the
stage. Everybody knows that."

It seemed that her hand tightened on his arm. Her
face was radiant. " There," she exclaimed. " Now
you are forgiven. You are a nice boy, Rufus-some-
times."

When Miss Black went to her cabin, Coleman strolled into
the smoking room. Every man there covertly or openly
surveyed him. He dropped lazily into a chair at a table where
the wine merchant, the Chicago railway king and the New York
millionaire were playing cards. They made a noble pretense of
not being aware of him. On the oil cloth top of the table the
cards were snapped down, turn by turn.

Finally the wine merchant, without lifting his head to-
address a particular person, said: " New conquest."

Hailing a steward Coleman asked for a brandy and soda.

The millionaire said: " He's a sly cuss, anyhow." The railway
man grinned. After an elaborate silence the wine merchant
asked: " Know Miss Black long, Rufus?" Coleman looked
scornfully at his friends. " What's wrong with you there,
fellows, anyhow?" The Chicago man answered airily. " Oh,
nothin'. Nothin', whatever."

At dinner in the crowded salon, Coleman was aware that
more than one passenger glanced first at Nora Black and then
at him, as if connecting them in some train of thought, moved to
it by the narrow horizon of shipboard and by a sense of the
mystery that surrounds the lives of the beauties of the stage.
Near the captain's right hand sat the glowing and splendid
Nora, exhibiting under the gaze of the persistent eyes of many
meanings, a practiced and profound composure that to the
populace was terrfying dignity.

Strolling toward the smoking room after dinner, Coleman met
the New York millionaire, who seemed agitated. He took
Coleman fraternally by the arm. " Say, old man, introduce me,
won't you ? I'm crazy to know her."

"Do you mean Miss Black?" asked Coleman.

" Why, I don't know that I have a right. Of course, you know,
she hasn't been meeting anybody aboard. I'll ask her, though-
certainly."

" Thanks, old man, thanks. I'd be tickled to death. Come
along and have a drink. When will you ask her? "
" Why, I don't know when I'll see her. To-morrow, I suppose-"

They had not been long in the smoking room, however,
when the deck steward came with a card to Coleman. Upon it
was written: "Come for' a stroll?" Everybody, saw Coleman read
this card and then look up and whisper to the deck steward.
The deck steward bent his head and whispered discreetly in
reply. There was an abrupt pause in the hum of conversation.
The interest was acute.

Coleman leaned carelessly back in his chair, puffing at his
cigar. He mingled calmly in a discussion of the comparative
merits of certain trans-Atlantic lines. After a time he threw away
his cigar and arose. Men nodded. "Didn't I tell you?" His
studiously languid exit was made dramatic by the eagle-eyed
attention of the smoking room.

On deck he found Nora pacing to and fro. "You didn't hurry
yourself," she said, as he joined her. The lights of Queenstown
were twinkling. A warm wind, wet with the moisture of rain-
stricken sod, was coming from the land.

"Why," said Coleman, "we've got all these duffers very much excited."

"Well what do you care? " asked hte girl. "You don't, care do you?"

"No, I don't care.  Only it's rather absurd to be
watched all the time."  He said this precisely as
if he abhorred being watched in this case.
"Oh by the way," he added.  Then he paused for a
moment.  "Aw--a friend of mine--not a bad fellow--
he asked me for an introduction.  Of course, I
told him I'd ask you."

She made a contemptuous gesture.  "Oh, another Willie.
Tell him no.  Tell him to go home to his family.  Tell
him to run away."

"He isn't a bad fellow.  He--" said Coleman diffidently,
"he would probably be at the theatre every night in a box."

"yes, and get drunk and throw a wine bottle on the
stage instead of a bouquet. No," she declared positively,
"I won't see him."

Coleman did not seem to be oppressed by this ultimatum.
"Oh, all right.  I promised him--that was all."

"Besides, are you in a great hurry to get rid of me?"

"Rid of you?  Nonsense."

They walked in the shadow.  "How long are you going to be
in London, Rufus?" asked Nora softly.

"Who?  I? Oh, I'm going right off to Greece.  First
train.  There's going to be a war, you know."

"A war?  Why, who is going to fight?  The Greeks
and the--the--the what?"

"The Turks.  I'm going right over there."

"Why, that's dreadful, Rufus,"  said the girl, mournfull
and shocked.  "You might get hurt or something."
Presently she asked: "And aren't you going to be in
London any time at all?"

"Oh," he answered, puffing out his lips, "I may stop
in Londom for three or four days on my way home.  I'm
not sure of it."

"And when will that be?"

"Oh, I can't tell.  It may be in three or four months,
or it may be a year from now.  When the war stops."

There was a long silence as the walked up and down
the swaying deck.

"Do you know," said Nora at last, "I like you, Rufus Coleman.
I don't know any good reason for it either, unless it is because
you are such a brute.  Now, when I was asking you if you were
to be in London you were perfectly detestable.  You know I was
anxious."

"I--detestable?" cried Coleman, feigning amazement.
"Why, what did I say?"

"It isn't so much what you said--" began Nora slowlly.
Then she suddenly changed her manner.
"Oh, well, don't let's talk about it any more.  It's
too foolish. Only-you are a disagreeable person sometimes."

In the morning, as the vessel steamed up the Irish channel,
Coleman was on deck, keeping furtive watch on the cabin
stairs. After two hours of waiting, he scribbled a message on a
card and sent it below. He received an answer that Miss Black
had a headache, and felt too ill to come on deck. He went to the
smoking room. The three card-players glanced up, grinning.
"What's the matter?" asked the wine merchant. "You look
angry." As a matter of fact, Coleman had purposely wreathed
his features in a pleasant and satisfied expression, so he was
for a moment furious at the wine merchant.

"Confound the girl," he thought to himself. "She has
succeeded in making all these beggars laugh at me." He mused
that if he had another chance he would show her how
disagreeable or detestable or scampish he was under some
circumstances. He reflected ruefully that the complacence with
which he had accepted the comradeship of the belle of the
voyage might have been somewhat overdone. Perhaps he had got a
little out of proportion. He was annoyed at the stares of the
other men in the smoking room, who seemed now to be reading
his discomfiture. As for Nora Black he thought of her wistfully
and angrily as a superb woman whose company was honour
and joy, a payment for any sacrifices.

" What's the matter? " persisted the wine merchant. " You
look grumpy."
Coleman laughed. " Do I?"

At Liverpool, as the steamer was being slowly warped to the
landing stage by some tugs, the passengers crowded the deck
with their hand-bags. Adieus were falling as dead leaves fall
from a great tree. The stewards were handling small hills of
luggage marked with flaming red labels. The ship was firmly
against the dock before Miss Black came from her cabin.
Coleman was at the time gazing shoreward, but his three
particular friends instantly nudged him. "What?" "There she
is?" "Oh, Miss Black?" He composedly walked toward her. It
was impossible to tell whether she saw him coming or whether it
was accident, but at any rate she suddenly turned and moved
toward the stern of the ship. Ten watchful gossips had noted
Coleman's travel in her direction and more than half the
passengers noted his defeat. He wheeled casually and returned
to his three friends. They were colic-stricken with a coarse and
yet silent merriment. Coleman was glad that the voyage was
over.

After the polite business of an English custom house, the
travellers passed out to the waiting train. A nimble little
theatrical agent of some kind, sent from London, dashed
forward to receive Miss Black. He had a first-class compartment
engaged for her and he bundled her and her maid into it in an
exuberance of enthusiasm and admiration.. Coleman passing moodily
along the line of coaches heard Nora's voice hailing him.

" Rufus." There she was, framed in a carriage window,
beautiful and smiling brightly. Every near. by person turned to
contemplate this vision.

" Oh," said Coleman advancing, " I thought I was not going
to get a chance to say good-bye to you." He held out his hand.
" Good-bye."

She pouted. " Why, there's plenty of room in this
compartment." Seeing that some forty people were transfixed in
observation of her, she moved a short way back. " Come on in
this compartment, Rufus," she said.

"Thanks. I prefer to smoke," said Coleman. He went off
abruptly.

On the way to London, he brooded in his corner on the two
divergent emotions he had experienced when refusing her
invitation. At Euston Station in London, he was directing a
porter, who had his luggage, when he heard Nora speak at his
shoulder. " Well, Rufus, you sulky boy," she said, " I shall be at
the Cecil. If you have time, come and see me."

" Thanks, I'm sure, my dear Nora," answered Coleman
effusively. "But honestly, I'm off for Greece."

A brougham was drawn up near them and the nimble
little agent was waiting. The maid was directing the
establishment of a mass of luggage on and in a four-wheeler
cab. " Well, put me into my carriage, anyhow," said Nora. " You
will have time for that."

Afterward she addressed him from the dark interior.
Now, Rufus, you must come to see me the minute you strike
London again- of She hesitated a moment and then smiling
gorgeously upon him, she said: " Brute! "







CHAPTER VIII.

As soon as Coleman had planted his belongings in a hotel he
was bowled in a hansom briskly along the smoky Strand,
through a dark city whose walls dripped like the walls of a cave
and whose passages were only illuminated by flaring yellow
and red signs.

Walkley the London correspondent of the Eclipse, whirled
from his chair with a shout of joy and relief -at sight of Coleman.
" Cables," he cried. "Nothin' but cables! All the people in New
York are writing cables to you. The wires groan with them. And
we groan with them too. They come in here in bales. However,
there is no reason why you should read them all. Many are
similar in words and many more are similar in spirit. The sense
of the whole thing is that you get to Greece quickly, taking with
you immense sums of money and enormous powers over
nations."

" Well, when does the row begin? "

" The most astute journalists in Europe have been predicting
a general European smash-up every year since 1878," said
Walkley, " and the prophets weep. The English are the only
people who can pull off wars on schedule time, and they have
to do it in odd corners of the globe. I fear the war business is
getting tuckered. There is sorrow in the lodges of the lone wolves,
the war correspondents. However, my boy, don't bury your face in
your blanket. This Greek business looks very promising, very
promising." He then began to proclaim trains and connections.
" Dover, Calais, Paris, Brindisi, Corfu, Patras, Athens. That is
your game. You are supposed to sky-rocket yourself over that
route in the shortest possible time, but you would gain no time
by starting before to-morrow, so you can cool your heels here
in London until then. I wish I was going along."

Coleman returned to his hotel, a knight impatient and savage
at being kept for a time out of the saddle. He went for a late
supper to the grill room and as he was seated there alone, a
party of four or five people came to occupy the table directly
behind him. They talked a great deal even before they arrayed
them. selves at the table, and he at once recognised the voice
of Nora Black. She was queening it, apparently, over a little
band of awed masculine worshippers.

Either by accident or for some curious reason, she took a
chair back to back with Coleman's chair. Her sleeve of fragrant
stuff almost touched his shoulder and he felt appealing to him
seductively a perfume of orris root and violet. He was drinking
bottled stout with his chop; be sat with a face of wood.

" Oh, the little lord ? " Nora was crying to some slave.
"Now, do you know, he won't do at all. He is too awfully
charming. He sits and ruminates for fifteen minutes and then he
pays me a lovely compliment. Then he ruminates for another
fifteen minutes and cooks up another fine thing. It is too
tiresome. Do you know what kind of man. I like? " she asked
softly and confidentially. And here she sank back in her chair
until. Coleman knew from the tingle that her head was but a few
inches from his head. Her, sleeve touched him. He turned more
wooden under the spell of the orris root and violet. Her
courtiers thought it all a graceful pose, but Coleman believed
otherwise. Her voice sank to the liquid, siren note of a
succubus. " Do you know what kind of a man I like? Really
like? I like a man that a woman can't bend in a thousand
different ways in five minutes. He must have some steel in him.
He obliges me to admire him the most when he remains stolid;
stolid to me lures. Ah, that is the only kind of a man who cap
ever break a heart among us women of the world. His stolidity
is not real; no; it is mere art, but it is a highly finished art and
often enough we can't cut through it. Really we can't. And, then
we may actually come to--er--care for the man. Really we may.
Isn't it funny?"

Alt the end Coleman arose and strolled out of the. room,
smoking a cigarette. He did not betray, a sign. Before. the door
clashed softly behind him,  Nora laughed a little defiantly, perhaps
a little loudly. It made every man in the grill-room perk up his ears.
As for her courtiers, they were entranced. In her description of the
conquering man, she had easily contrived that each one of
them wondered if she might not mean him. Each man was
perfectly sure that he had plenty of steel in his composition
and that seemed to be a main point.

Coleman delayed for a time in the smoking room and then went
to his own quarters. In reality he was Somewhat puzzled in his
mind by a projection of the beauties of Nora Black upon his
desire for Greece and Marjory, His thoughts formed a duality.
Once he was on the point of sending his card to Nora Black's
parlour, inasmuch as Greece was very distant and he could not
start until the morrow. But he suspected that he was holding
the interest of the actress because of his recent appearance of
impregnable serenity in the presence of her fascinations. If he
now sent his card, it was a form of surrender and he knew her
to be one to take a merciless advantage. He would not make
this tactical mistake. On the contrary he would go to bed and
think of war,

In reality he found it easy to fasten his mind upon the
prospective war. He regarded himself cynically in most
affairs, but he could not be cynical of war, because had he -
seen none of it. His rejuvenated imagination began to thrill to
the roll of battle,
through his thought passing all the lightning in the pictures of
Detaille, de Neuville and Morot; lashed battery horse roaring
over bridges; grand cuirassiers dashing headlong against stolid
invincible red-faced lines of German infantry; furious and
bloody grapplings in the streets of little villages of
northeastern France. There was one thing at least of which he
could still feel the spirit of a debutante. In this matter of war he
was not, too, unlike a young girl embarking upon her first
season of opera. Walkely, the next morning, saw this mood
sitting quaintly upon Coleman and cackled with astonishment
and glee. Coleman's usual manner did not return until he
detected Walkely's appreciation of his state and then he
snubbed him according to the ritual of the Sunday editor of the
New York Eclipse. Parenthetically, it
might be said that if Coleman now recalled Nora Black to his
mind at all, it was only to think of her for a moment with ironical
complacence. He had beaten her.

When the train drew out of the station, Coleman felt himself
thrill. Was ever fate less perverse ? War and love-war and
Marjory-were in conjunction both in Greece-and he could tilt
with one lance at both gods. It was a great fine game to play
and no man was ever so blessed in vacations. He was smiling
continually to himself and sometimes actually on the point of
talking aloud. This was despite the
presence in the compartment of two fellow passengers who
preserved in their uncomfortably rigid, icy and uncompromising
manners many of the more or less ridiculous traditions of the
English first class carriage. Coleman's fine humour betrayed him
once into addressing one of these passengers and the man
responded simply with a wide look of incredulity, as if he
discovered that he was travelling in the same compartment with
a zebu. It turned Coleman suddenly to evil temper and he
wanted to ask the man questions concerning his education and
his present mental condition: and so until the train arrived at
Dover, his ballooning soul was in danger of collapsing. On the
packet crossing the channel, too, he almost returned to the
usual Rufus Coleman since all the world was seasick and he
could not get a cabin in which to hide himself from it. However
he reaped much consolation by ordering a bottle of
champagne and drinking it in sight of the people, which made
them still more seasick. From Calais to Brindisi really nothing
met his disapproval save the speed of the train, the conduct of
some of the passengers, the quality of the food served, the
manners of the guards, the temperature of the carriages, the
prices charged and the length of the journey.

In time he passed as in a vision from wretched Brindisi to
charming Corfu, from Corfu to the little
war-bitten city of Patras and from Patras by rail at the speed of
an ox-cart to Athens.

With a smile of grim content and surrounded in his carriage
with all his beautiful brown luggage, he swept through the
dusty streets of the Greek capital. Even as the vehicle arrived in
a great terraced square in front of the yellow palace, Greek
recruits in garments representing many trades and many
characters were marching up cheering for Greece and the king.
Officers stood upon the little iron chairs in front of the cafes; all
the urchins came running and shouting; ladies waved their
handkerchiefs from the balconies; the whole city was vivified
with a leaping and joyous enthusiasm. The Athenians--as
dragomen or otherwise-had preserved an ardor for their
glorious traditions, and it was as if that in the white dust which
lifted from the plaza and floated across the old-ivory face of the
palace, there were the souls of the capable soldiers of the past.
Coleman was almost intoxicated with it. It seemed to celebrate
his own reasons, his reasons of love and ambition to conquer
in love.

When the carriage arrived in front of the Hotel D'Angleterre,
Coleman found the servants of the place with more than one
eye upon the scene in the plaza, but they soon paid heed to the
arrival of a gentleman with such an amount of beautiful leather
luggage, all marked boldly with the initials "R. C." Coleman let
them lead him and follow him and conduct him and
use bad English upon him without noting either
their words, their salaams or their work. His mind had quickly
fixed upon the fact that here was the probable headquarters of
the Wainwright party and, with the rush of his western race
fleeting through his veins, he felt that he would choke and die
if he did not learn of the Wainwrights in the first two minutes. It
was a tragic venture to attempt to make the Levantine mind
understand something off the course, that the new arrival's first
thought was to establish a knowlege of the whereabouts of
some of his friends rather than to swarm helter-skelter into that
part of the hotel for which he was willing to pay rent. In fact he
failed to thus impress them; failed in dark wrath, but,
nevertheless, failed. At last he was simply forced to concede
the travel of files of men up the broad, redcarpeted stair-case,
each man being loaded with Coleman's luggage. The men in the
hotel-bureau were then able to comprehend that the foreign
gentleman might have something else on his mind. They raised
their eye-brows languidly when he spoke of the Wainwright
party in gentle surprise that he had not yet learned that they
were gone some time. They were departed on some excursion.
Where? Oh, really-it was almost laughable, indeed-they didn't
know. Were they sure? Why, yes-it was almost laughable,
indeed -they were quite sure. Where could the gentleman find
out about them ? Well, they-as they had explained-did
not know, but-it was possible-the American
minister might know. Where was he to be found? Oh, that was
very simple. It was well known that the American minister had
apartments in the hotel. Was he in? Ah, that they could not
say.
So Coleman, rejoicing at his final emancipation and with the
grime of travel still upon him, burst in somewhat violently upon
the secretary of the Hon. Thomas M. Gordner of Nebraska, the
United States minister to Greece. From his desk the secretary
arose from behind an accidental bulwark of books and
govermental pamphets. " Yes, certainly. Mr. Gordner is in. If
you would give me your card-"

Directly. Coleman was introduced into another room where a
quiet man who was rolling a cigarette looked him frankly but
carefully in the eye. "The Wainwrights " said the minister
immediately after the question. "Why, I myself am immensely
concerned about them at present. I'm afraid they've gotten
themselves into trouble.'

" Really? " said Coleman.

" Yes. That little professor is ratherer--stubborn; Isn't he ?
He wanted to make an expedition to Nikopolis and I explained
to him all the possibilities of war and begged him to at least not
take his wife and daughter with him."

" Daughter," murmured Coleman, as if in his sleep.

"But that little old man had a head like a stone
and only laughed at me. Of course those villainous young
students were only too delighted at a prospect of war, but it
was a stupid and absurd. thing for the man to take his wife and
daughter there. They are up there now. I can't get a word from
them or get a word to them."

Coleman had been choking. "Where is Nikopolis? " he asked.

The minister gazed suddenly in comprehension of the man
before him. " Nikopolis is in Turkey," he answered gently.

Turkey at that time was believed to be a country of delay,
corruption, turbulence and massacre. It meant everything. More
than a half of the Christians of the world shuddered at the name
of Turkey. Coleman's lips tightened and perhaps blanched, and
his chin moved out strangely, once, twice, thrice. " How can I
get to Nikopolis? " he said.

The minister smiled. " It would take you the better part of
four days if you could get there, but as a matter of fact you
can't get there at the present time. A Greek army and a Turkish
army are looking at each other from the sides of the river at
Arta-the river is there the frontier-and Nikopolis happens to be
on the wrong side. You can't reach them. The forces at Arta will
fight within three days. I know it. Of course I've notified our
legation at Constantinople, but, with Turkish methods of
communication, Nikopolis is about as far from
Constantinople as New York is from Pekin."

Coleman arose. "They've run themselves into a nice mess,"
he said crossly. " Well, I'm a thousand times obliged to you, I'm
sure."

The minister opened his eyes a trifle. You are not going to
try to reach them, are you ? "

" Yes," answered Coleman, abstractedly. " I'm going to have a
try at it. Friends of mine, you know-"

At the bureau of the hotel, the correspondent found several
cables awaiting him from the alert office of the New York Eclipse.
One of them read: "State Department gives out bad plight of
Wainwright party lost somewhere; find them. Eclipse." When
Coleman perused the message he began to smile with seraphic
bliss. Could fate have ever been less perverse.

Whereupon he whirled himself in Athens. And it was to the
considerable astonishment of some Athenians. He discovered
and instantly subsidised a young Englishman who, during his
absence at the front, would act as correspondent for the
Eclipse at the capital. He took unto himself a dragoman and
then bought three horses and hired a groom at a speed that
caused a little crowd at the horse dealer's place to come out
upon the pavement and watch this surprising young man ride
back toward his hotel. He had already driven his dragoman into
a curious state of Oriental bewilderment and panic in which he
could only lumber hastily and helplessly here and there, with
his face in the meantime marked with agony. Coleman's own field
equipment had been ordered by cable from New York to London, but
it was necessary to buy much tinned meats, chocolate, coffee,
candles, patent food, brandy, tobaccos, medicine and other
things.

He went to bed that night feeling more placid. The train back
to Patras was to start in the early morning, and he felt the
satisfaction of a man who is at last about to start on his own
great quest. Before he dropped off to slumber, he heard crowds
cheering exultantly in the streets, and the cheering moved him
as it had done in the morning. He felt that the celebration of the
people was really an accompaniment to his primal reason, a
reason of love and ambition to conquer in love-even as in the
theatre, the music accompanies the heroin his progress. He
arose once during the night to study a map of the Balkan
peninsula and get nailed into his mind the exact position of
Nikopolis. It was important.







CHAPTER IX.

COLEMAN'S dragoman aroused him in the blue before dawn.
The correspondent arrayed himself in one of his new khaki suits-
riding breeches and a tunic well marked with buttoned pockets-
and accompanied by some of his beautiful brown luggage, they
departed for the station.

The ride to Patras is a terror under ordinary circumstances. It
begins in the early morning and ends in the twilight. To
Coleman, having just come from Patras to Athens, this journey
from Athens to Patras had all the exasperating elements of a
forced recantation. Moreover, he had not come prepared to
view with awe the ancient city of Corinth nor to view with
admiration the limpid beauties of the gulf of that name with its
olive grove shore. He was not stirred by Parnassus, a far-away
snow-field high on the black shoulders of the mountains across
the gulf. No; he wished to go to Nikopolis. He passed over the
graves of an ancient race the gleam of whose mighty minds
shot, hardly dimmed, through the clouding ages. No; he wished
to go to Nikopolis. The train went at a snail's pace, and if
Coleman bad an interest it was in the people who lined the route
and cheered the soldiers on the train. In Coleman s compartment there was a
greasy person who spoke a little English. He explained that he
was a poet, a poet who now wrote of nothing but war. When a
man is in pursuit of his love and success is known to be at least
remote, it often relieves his strain if he is deeply bored from time
to time.

The train was really obliged to arrive finally at Patras even if it
was a tortoise, and when this happened, a hotel runner
appeared, who lied for the benefit of the hotel in saying that
there was no boat over to Mesalonghi that night. When, all too
late, Coleman discovered the truth of the matter his wretched
dragoman came in for a period of infamy and suffering.
However, while strolling in the plaza at Patras, amid newsboys
from every side, by rumour and truth, Coleman learned things to
his advantage. A Greek fleet was bombarding Prevasa. Prevasa
was near Nikopolis. The opposing armies at Arta were
engaged, principally in an artillery duel. Arta was on the road from
Nikopolis into Greece. Hearing this news in the sunlit square
made him betray no weakness, but in the darkness of his room
at the hotel, he seemed to behold Marjory encircled by
insurmountable walls of flame. He could look out of his window
into the black night of the north and feel every ounce of a
hideous circumstance. It appalled him; here was no power of
calling up a score of reporters and sending them scampering to
accomplish everything. He even might as well have been without
a tongue as far as it could serve him in goodly speech. He was
alone, confronting the black ominous Turkish north behind which
were the deadly flames; behind the flames was Marjory. It worked
upon him until he felt obliged to call in his dragoman, and then,
seated upon the edge of his bed and waving his pipe eloquently, he
described the plight of some very dear friends who were cut off at
Nikopolis in Epirus. Some of his talk was almost wistful in its wish
for sympathy from his servant, but at the end he bade the dragoman
understand that be, Coleman, was going to their rescue, and he
defiantly asked the hireling if he was prepared to go with him.
But he did not know the Greek nature. In two minutes the
dragoman was weeping tears of enthusiasm, and, for these tears,
Coleman was over-grateful, because he had not been told that
any of the more crude forms of sentiment arouse the common
Greek to the highest pitch, but sometimes, when it comes to
what the Americans call a "show down," when he gets backed
toward his last corner with a solitary privilege of dying for these
sentiments, perhaps he does not always exhibit those talents
which are supposed to be possessed by the bulldog. He often
then, goes into the cafes and take's it out in oration, like
any common Parisian.

In the morning A steamer carried them across the
strait and landed them near Mesalonghi at the foot of the
railroad that leads to Agrinion. At Agrinion Coleman at last
began to feel that he was nearing his goal. There were plenty of
soldiers in the town, who received with delight and applause
this gentleman in the distinguished-looking khaki clothes with
his revolver and his field glasses and his canteen and; his
dragoman. The dragoman lied, of course, and vocifcrated that
the gentleman in the distinguished-looking khaki clothes was
an English soldier of reputation, who had, naturally, come to
help the cross in its fight against, the crescent. He also said
that his master had three superb horses coming from Athens in
charge of a groom, and was undoubtedly going to join the
cavalry. Whereupon the soldiers wished to embrace and kiss
the gentleman in the distinguished-looking khaki clothes.

There was more or less of a scuffle. Coleman would have
taken to kicking and punching, but he found that by a- series of
elusive movements he could dodge the demonstrations of
affection without losing his popularity. Escorted by the
soldiers, citizens, children and dogs, he went to the diligence
which was to take him and others the next stage of the journey.
As the diligence proceeded, Coleman's mind suffered another
little inroad of ill-fate as to the success of his expedition. In the
first place it appeared foolish to expect that this diligence
would ever arrive anywhere. Moreover, the
accommodations were about equal to what one would endure if
one undertook to sleep for a night in a tree. Then there was a
devil-dog, a little black-and-tan terrier in a blanket gorgeous and
belled, whose duty it was to stand on the top of the coach and
bark incessantly to keep the driver fully aroused to the enormity
of his occupation. To have this cur silenced either by
strangulation or ordinary clubbing, Coleman struggled with his
dragoman as Jacob struggled with the angel, but in the first
place, the dragoman was a Greek whose tongue could go quite
drunk, a Greek who became a slave to the heralding and
establishment of one certain fact, or lie, and now he was
engaged in describing to every village and to all the country
side the prowess of the gentleman in the distinguished-looking
khaki clothes. It was the general absurdity of this advance to
the frontier and the fighting, to the crucial place where he was
resolved to make an attempt to rescue his sweetheart ; it was
this ridiculous aspect that caused to come to Coleman a
premonition of failure. No knight ever went out to recover a lost
love in such a diligence and with such a devil-dog, tinkling his
little bells and yelping insanely to keep the driver awake.
After night-fall they arrived at a town on the southern coast
of the Gulf of Arta and the goaded dragoman was-thrust forth
from the little inn into the street to find the first possible means
of getting on to Arta. He returned at last to tremulously say that
there was no single chance of starting for Arta that night. Where
upon he was again thrust into the street with orders, strict orders.
In due time, Coleman spread his rugs upon the floor of his little room
and thought himself almost asleep,. when the dragoman entered
with a really intelligent man who, for some reason, had agreed
to consort with him in the business of getting the stranger off
to Arta. They announced that there was a brigantine about to
sail with a load of soldiers for a little port near Arta, and if
Coleman hurried he could catch it, permission from an officer
having already been obtained. He was up at once, and the
dragoman and the unaccountably intelligent person hastily
gathered his chattels. Stepping out into a black street and
moving to the edge of black water and embarking in a black
boat filled with soldiers whose rifles dimly shone, was as
impressive to Coleman as if, really, it had been the first start. He
had endured many starts, it was true, but the latest one always
touched him as being conclusive.

There were no lights on the brigantine and the men swung
precariously up her sides to the deck which was already
occupied by a babbling multitude. The dragoman judiciously
found a place for his master where during the night the latter
had to move quickly everytime the tiller was shifted to
starboard.

The craft raised her shadowy sails and swung slowly off into
the deep gloom. Forward, some of the soldiers began to sing
weird minor melodies. Coleman, enveloped in his rugs, -smoked
three or four cigars. He was content and miserable, lying there,
hearing these melodies which defined to him his own affairs.

At dawn they were at the little port. First, in the carmine and
grey tints from a sleepy sun, they could see little mobs of
soldiers working amid boxes of stores. And then from the back
in some dun and green hills sounded a deep-throated thunder
of artillery  An officer gave Coleman and his dragoman
positions in one of the first boats, but of course it could not be
done without an almost endless amount of palaver. Eventually
they landed with their traps. Coleman felt through the sole of
his boot his foot upon the shore. He was within striking
distance.

But here it was smitten into the head of Coleman's servant to
turn into the most inefficient dragoman, probably in the entire
East. Coleman discerned it immediately, before any blunder
could tell him. He at first thought that it was the voices of the
guns which had made a chilly inside for the man, but when he
reflected upon the incompetency, or childish courier's falsity, at
Patras and his discernible lack of sense from Agrinion onward,
he felt that the fault was elemental in his nature. It was a mere
basic inability to front novel situations which was somehow in the
dragoman; he retreated from everything difficult in a smoke of
gibberish and gesticulation. Coleman glared at him with the hatred that
sometimes ensues when breed meets breed, but he saw that
this man was indeed a golden link in his possible success. This
man connected him with Greece and its language. If he
destroyed him he delayed what was now his main desire in life.
However, this truth did not prevent him from addressing the
man in elegant speech.

The two little men who were induced to carry Coleman's
luggage as far as the Greek camp were really procured by the
correspondent himself, who pantomined vigourously and with
unmistakable vividness. Followed by his dragoman and the two
little men, he strode off along a road which led straight as a
stick to where the guns were at intervals booming. Meanwhile
the dragoman and the two little men talked, talked, talked.-
Coleman was silent, puffing his cigar and reflecting upon the
odd things which happen to chivalry in the modern age.

He knew of many men who would have been astonished if
they could have seen into his mind at that time, and he knew of
many more men who would have laughed if they had the same
privilege of sight. He made no attempt to conceal from himself
that the whole thing was romantic, romantic despite the  little
tinkling dog, the decrepit diligence, the palavering
natives, the super-idiotic dragoman. It was fine, It was from
another age and even the actors could not deface the purity of
the picture. However it was true that upon the brigantine the
previous night he had unaccountably wetted all his available
matches. This was momentous, important, cruel truth, but
Coleman, after all, was taking-as well as he could forgeta solemn
and knightly joy of this adventure and there were as many
portraits of his lady envisioning. before him as ever held the
heart of an armour-encased young gentleman of medieval
poetry. If he had been travelling in this region as an ordinary
tourist, he would have been apparent mainly for his lofty
impatience over trifles, but now there was in him a positive
assertion of direction which was undoubtedly one of the
reasons for the despair of the accomplished dragoman.

Before them the country slowly opened and opened, the
straight white road always piercing it like a lanceshaft. Soon
they could see black masses of men marking the green knolls.
The artillery thundered loudly and now vibrated augustly
through the air. Coleman quickened his pace, to the despair of
the little men carrying the traps. They finally came up with one
of these black bodies of men and found it to be composed of a
considerable number of soldiers who were idly watching some
hospital people bury a dead Turk. The dragoman at once dashed
forward to peer through the throng and see the face of the corpse.
Then he came and supplicated Coleman as if he were hawking him to
look at a relic and Coleman moved by a strong, mysterious
impulse, went forward to look at the poor little clay-coloured
body. At that moment a snake ran out from a tuft of grass at his
feet and wriggled wildly over the sod. The dragoman shrieked,
of course, but one of the soldiers put his heel upon the head of
the reptile and it flung itself into the agonising knot of death.
Then the whole crowd powwowed, turning from the dead man
to the dead snake. Coleman signaled his contingent and
proceeded along the road.

This incident, this paragraph, had seemed a strange
introduction to war. The snake, the dead man, the entire sketch,
made him shudder of itself, but more than anything he felt an
uncanny symbolism. It was no doubt a mere occurrence;
nothing but an occurrence; but inasmuch as all the detail of this
daily life associated itself with Marjory, he felt a different
horror. He had thought of the little devil-dog and Marjory in an
interwoven way. Supposing Marjory had been riding in the
diligence with the devil-dog-a-top ? What would she have said ?
Of her fund of expressions, a fund uncountable, which would
she have innocently projected against the background of the
Greek hills? Would it have smitten her nerves badly or would
she have laughed ? And supposing Marjory
could have seen him in his new khaki clothes cursing his
dragoman as he listened to the devil-dog?

And now he interwove his memory of Marjory with a dead
man and with a snake in the throes of the end of life. They
crossed, intersected, tangled, these two thoughts. He perceived
it clearly; the incongruity of it. He academically reflected upon
the mysteries of the human mind, this homeless machine which
lives here and then there and often lives in two or three
opposing places at the same instant. He decided that the
incident of the snake and the dead man had no more meaning
than the greater number of the things which happen to us in our
daily lives. Nevertheless it bore upon him.

On a spread of plain they saw a force drawn up in a long line.
It was a flagrant inky streak on the verdant prairie. From
somewhere near it sounded the timed reverberations of guns.
The brisk walk of the next ten minutes was actually exciting to
Coleman. He could not but reflect that those guns were being
fired with serious purpose at certain human bodies much like
his own.

As they drew nearer they saw that the inky streak was
composed of cavalry, the troopers standing at their bridles. The
sunlight flicked, upon their bright weapons. Now the dragoman
developed in one of his extraordinary directions. He announced
forsooth that an intimate friend was a captain of cavalry in this
command. Coleman at first thought. that this was some kind of
mysterious lie, but when he arrived where they could hear the
stamping of hoofs, the clank of weapons, and the murmur of
men, behold, a most dashing young officer gave a shout of joy
and he and the dragoman hurled themselves into a mad
embrace. After this first ecstacy was over, the dragoman
bethought him of his employer, and looking toward Coleman
hastily explained him to the officer. The latter, it appeared, was
very affable indeed. Much had happened. The Greeks and the
Turks had been fighting over a shallow part of the river nearly
opposite this point and the Greeks had driven back the Turks
and succeeded in throwing a bridge of casks and planking
across the stream. It was now the duty and the delight of this
force of cavalry to cross the bridge and, passing, the little force
of covering Greek infantry, to proceed into Turkey until they
came in touch with the enemy.

Coleman's eyes dilated. Was ever fate less perverse ? Partly
in wretched French to the officer and partly in idiomatic English
to the dragoman, he proclaimed his fiery desire to accompany
the expedition. The officer immediately beamed upon him. In
fact, he was delighted. The dragoman had naturally told him
many falsehoods concerning Coleman, incidentally referring to
himself more as a philanthropic guardian and, valuable friend of
the correspondent than as, a plain, unvarnished. dragoman
with an exceedingly good eye for the financial possibilities of
his position.

Coleman wanted to ask his servant if there was any chance of
the scout taking them near Nikopolis, but he delayed being
informed upon this point until such time as he could find out,
secretly, for himself. To ask the dragoman would be mere stupid
questioning which would surely make the animal shy.  He tried
to be content that fate had given him this early opportunity of
dealing with a Medieval situation with some show of proper
form ; that is to say, armed, a-horse- back, and in danger. Then
he could feel that to the gods of the game he was not laughable,
as when he rode to rescue his love in a diligence with a devil-
dog yelping a-top.

With some flourish, the young captain presented him to the
major who commanded the cavalry. This officer stood with his
legs wide apart, eating the rind of a fresh lemon and talking
betimes to some of his officers. The major also beamed upon
Coleman when the captain explained that the gentleman in the
distinguished-looking khaki clothes wished to accompany the
expedition. He at once said that he would provide two troop
horses for Coleman and the dragoman. Coleman thanked fate
for his behaviour and his satisfaction was not without a vestige
of surprise. At that time he judged it to be a remarkable
amiability of individuals, but in later years he came to believe in
certain laws which he deemed existent solely for the benefit of
war correspondents. In the minds of governments, war offices
and generals they have no function save one of disturbance, but
Coleman deemed it proven that the common men, and many
uncommon men, when they go away to the fighting ground, out
of the sight, out of the hearing of the world known to them, and
are eager to perform feats of war in this new place, they feel an
absolute longing for a spectator. It is indeed the veritable
coronation of this world. There is not too much vanity of the
street in this desire of men to have some disinterested fellows
perceive their deeds. It is merely that a man doing his best in the
middle of a sea of war, longs to have people see him doing his
best. This feeling is often notably serious if, in peace, a man has
done his worst, or part of his worst. Coleman believed that,
above everybody, young, proud and brave subalterns had this
itch, but it existed, truly enough, from lieutenants to colonels.
None wanted to conceal from his left hand that his right hand
was performing a manly and valiant thing, although there might
be times when an application of the principle would be
immensely convenient. The war correspondent arises, then, to
become a sort of a cheap telescope for the people at home;
further still, there have been fights where the eyes of a solitary
man were the eyes of the world; one spectator, whose business
it was to transfer, according to his ability, his visual impressions
to other minds.

Coleman and his servant were conducted to two saddled
troop horses, and beside them, waited decently in the rear of
the ranks. The uniform of the troopers was of plain, dark green
cloth and they were well and sensibly equipped. The mounts,
however, had in no way been picked; there were little horses
and big horses, fat horses and thin horses. They looked the
result of a wild conscription. Coleman noted the faces of the
troopers, and they were calm enough save when a man
betrayed himself by perhaps a disproportionate angry jerk at
the bridle of his restive horse.

The major, artistically drooping his cloak from his left
shoulder and tenderly and musingly fingering his long yellow
moustache, rode slowly to the middle of the line and wheeled
his horse to face his men. A bugle called attention, and then he
addressed them in a loud and rapid speech, which did not seem
to have an end. Coleman imagined that the major was paying
tribute to the Greek tradition of the power of oratory. Again the
trumpet rang out, and this parade front swung off into column
formation. Then Coleman and the dragoman trotted at the tail of
the squadron, restraining with difficulty their horses, who could
not understand their new places in the procession, and worked
feverishly to regain what they considered their positions in life.

The column jangled musically over the sod, passing between
two hills on one of which a Greek light battery was posted. Its
men climbed to the tops of their interenchments to witness the
going of the cavalry. Then the column curved along over ditch
and through hedge to the shallows of the river. Across this
narrow stream was Turkey. Turkey, however, presented
nothing to the eye but a muddy bank with fringes of trees back
of it. It seemed to be a great plain with sparse collections of
foliage marking it, whereas the Greek side, presented in the
main a vista of high, gaunt rocks. Perhaps one of the first
effects of war upon the mind, is a. new recognition and fear of
the circumscribed ability of the eye, making all landscape seem
inscrutable. The cavalry drew up in platoon formation on their
own. bank of the stream and waited. If Coleman had known
anything of war, he would have known, from appearances, that
there was nothing in the immediate vicinity to, cause heart-
jumping, but as a matter of truth he was deeply moved and
wondered what was hidden, what was veiled by those trees.
Moreover, the squadrons resembled art old picture of a body of
horse awaiting Napoleon's order to charge. In the, meantime his
mount fumed at the bit, plunging to get back to the ranks. The
sky was, without a cloud, and the sun rays swept down upon
them. Sometimes Coleman was on the verge of addressing the
dragoman, according to his anxiety, but in the end
he simply told him to go to the river and fill the can- teens.

At last an order came, and the first troop moved with muffled
tumult across the bridge. Coleman and his dragoman followed
the last troop. The horses scrambled up the muddy bank much
as if they were merely breaking out of a pasture, but probably all
the men felt a sudden tightening of their muscles. Coleman, in
his excitement, felt, more than he saw, glossy horse flanks,
green-clothed men chumping in their saddles, banging sabres
and canteens, and carbines slanted in line.

There were some Greek infantry in a trench. They were
heavily overcoated, despite the heat, and some were engaged in
eating loaves of round, thick bread. They called out lustily as
the cavalry passed them. The troopers smiled slowly,
somewhat proudly in response.

Presently there was another halt and Coleman saw the major
trotting busily here and there, while troop commanders rode out
to meet him. Spreading groups of scouts and flankers moved off
and disappeared. Their dashing young officer friend cantered
past them with his troop at his heels. He waved a joyful good-
bye. It was the doings of cavalry in actual service, horsemen
fanning out in all forward directions. There were two troops
held in reserve, and as they jangled ahead at a foot pace,
Coleman and his dragoman followed them.

The dragoman was now moved to erect many reasons for an
immediate return. It was plain that he had no stomach at all for
this business, and that he wished himself safely back on the
other side of the river. Coleman looked at him askance. When
these men talked together Coleman might as well have been a
polar bear for all he understood of it. When he saw the
trepidation of his dragoman, he did not know what it foreboded.
In this situation it was not for him to say that the dragoman's
fears were founded on nothing. And ever the dragoman raised
his reasons for a retreat. Coleman spoke to himself. "I am just a
trifle rattled," he said to his heart, and after he had communed
for a time upon the duty of steadiness, he addressed the
dragoman in cool language. " Now, my persuasive friend, just
quit all that, because business is business, and it may be rather
annoying business, but you will have to go through with it."
Long afterward, when ruminating over the feelings of that
morning, he saw with some astonishment that there was not a
single thing within sound or sight to cause a rational being any
quaking. He was simply riding with some soldiers over a vast
tree-dotted prairie.

Presently the commanding officer turned in his saddle and
told the dragoman that he was going to ride forward with his
orderly to where he could see the flanking parties and the
scouts, and courteously, with
the manner of a gentleman entertaining two guests, he asked if
the civilians cared to accompany him. The dragoman would not
have passed this question correctly on to Coleman if he had
thought he could have avoided it, but, with both men regarding
him, he considered that a lie probably meant instant detection.
He spoke almost the truth, contenting himself with merely
communicating to Coleman in a subtle way his sense that a ride
forward with the commanding officer and his orderly would be
depressing and dangerous occupation. But Coleman
immediately accepted the invitation mainly because it was the
invitation of the major, and in war it is a brave man who can
refuse the invitation of a commanding officer. The little party of
four trotted away from the reserves, curving in single file about
the water-holes. In time they arrived at where the plain lacked
trees and was one great green lake of grass; grass and scrubs.
On this expanse they could see the Greek horsemen riding, mainly
appearing as little black dots. Far to the left there was a squad
said to be composed of only twenty troopers, but in the
distance their black mass seemed to be a regiment.

As the officer and his guests advanced they came in view of
what one may call the shore of the plain. The rise of ground was
heavily clad with trees, and over the tops of them appeared the
cupola and part of the walls of a large white house, and there
were glimpses of huts near it as if a village was marked. The black
specks seemed to be almost to it. The major galloped forward
and the others followed at his pace. The house grew larger and
larger and they came nearly to the advance scouts who they
could now see were not quite close to the village. There had
been a deception of the eye precisely as occurs at sea. Herds of
unguarded sheep drifted over the plain and little ownerless
horses, still cruelly hobbled, leaped painfully away, frightened,
as if they understood that an anarchy had come upon them. The
party rode until they were very nearly up with the scouts, and
then from low down at the very edge of the plain there came a
long rattling noise which endured as if some kind of grinding
machine had been put in motion. Smoke arose, faintly marking
the position of an intrenchment. Sometimes a swift spitting
could be heard from the air over the party.

It was Coleman's fortune to think at first that the Turks were
not firing in his direction, but as soon as he heard the weird
voices in the air he knew that war was upon him. But it was
plain that the range was almost excessive, plain even to his
ignorance. The major looked at him and laughed; he found no
difficulty in smiling in response. If this was war, it could be
withstood somehow. He could not at this time understand what
a mere trifle was the present incident. He felt upon his cheek a
little breeze which was moving the grass-blades. He had tied his
canteen in a wrong place on the saddle and every time the horse moved
quickly the canteen banged the correspondent, to his annoyance and
distress, forcibly on the knee. He had forgotten about his
dragoman, but happening to look upon that faithful servitor, he
saw him gone white with horror. A bullet at that moment
twanged near his head and the slave to fear ducked in a spasm.
Coleman called the orderly's attention and they both laughed
discreetly. They made no pretension of being heroes, but they
saw plainly that they were better than this man.
Coleman said to him : " How far is it now to Nikopolis ? " The
dragoman replied only, with a look of agonized impatience.

But of course there was no going to Nikopolis that day. The
officer had advanced his men as far as was intended by his
superiors, and presently they were all recalled and trotted back
to the bridge. They crossed it to their old camp.

An important part of Coleman's traps was back with his
Athenian horses and their groom, but with his present
equipment he could at least lie smoking on his blankets and
watch the dragoman prepare food. But he reflected that for that
day he had only attained the simple discovery that the
approach to Nikopolis was surrounded with difficulties.






CHAPTER X.

The same afternoon Coleman and the dragoman rode up to
Arta on their borrowed troop horses. The correspondent first
went to the telegraph office and found there the usual number
of despairing clerks. They were outraged when they found he
was going to send messages and thought it preposterous that
he insisted upon learning if there were any in the office for him.
They had trouble enough with endless official communications
without being hounded about private affairs by a confident
young man in khaki. But Coleman at last unearthed six
cablegrams which collective said that the Eclipse wondered why
they did not hear from him, that Walkley had been relieved from
duty in London and sent to join the army of the
crown prince, that young Point, the artist, had been
shipped to Greece, that if he, Coleman, succeeded in
finding the Wainwright party the paper was prepared
to make a tremendous uproar of a celebration over it
and, finally, the paper wondered twice more why they
did not hear from him.

When Coleman went forth to enquire if anybody knew of the
whereabouts of the Wainwright party he thought first of his
fellow correspondents. He found
most of them in a cafe where was to be had about the only food
in the soldier-laden town. It was a slothful den where even an
ordinary boiled egg could be made unpalatable. Such a common
matter as the salt men watched with greed and suspicion as if
they were always about to grab it from each other. The
proprietor, in a dirty shirt, could always be heard whining,
evidently telling the world that he was being abused, but he had
spirit enough remaining to charge three prices for everything
with an almost Jewish fluency.

The correspondents consoled themselves largely upon black -
bread and the native wines. Also there were certain little oiled
fishes, and some green odds and ends for salads. The
correspondents were practically all Englishmen. Some of them
were veterans of journalism in the Sudan, in India, in South
Africa; and there were others who knew as much of war as they
could learn by sitting at a desk and editing the London stock
reports. Some were on their own hook; some had horses and
dragomen and some had neither the one nor the other; many
knew how to write and a few had it yet to learn. The thing in
common was a spirit of adventure which found pleasure in the
extraordinary business of seeing how men kill each other.

They were talking of an artillery duel which had been fought
the previous day between the Greek batteries above the town
and the Turkish batteries across the river. Coleman
took seat at one of the long tables, and the
astute dragoman got somebody in the street to hold the horses
in order that he might be present at any feasting.

One of the experienced correspondents was remarking that
the fire of the Greek batteries in the engagement had been the
finest artillery practice of the century. He spoke a little loudly,
perhaps, in the wistful hope that some of the Greek officers
would understand enough English to follow his meaning, for it
is always good for a correspondent to admire the prowess on
his own side of the battlefield. After a time Coleman spoke in a
lull, and describing the supposed misfortunes of the
Wainwright party, asked if anyone had news of them. The
correspondents were surprised; they had none of them heard
even of the existence of a Wainwright party. Also none of them
seemed to care exceedingly. The conversation soon changed to
a discussion of the probable result of the general Greek
advance announced for the morrow.

Coleman silently commented that this remarkable appearance
of indifference to the mishap of the Wainwrights, a little party, a
single group, was a better definition of a real condition of war
than that bit of long-range musketry of the morning. He took a
certain despatch out of his pocket and again read it. " Find
Wainwright party at all hazards; much talk here; success
means red fire by ton. Eclipse." It
was an important matter. He could imagine how the American
people, vibrating for years to stories of the cruelty of the Turk,
would tremble-indeed, was now trembling-while the
newspapers howled out the dire possibilities. He saw all the
kinds of people, from those who would read the Wainwright
chapters from day to day as a sort of sensational novel, to
those who would work up a gentle sympathy for the woe of
others around the table in the evenings. He saw bar keepers
and policemen taking a high gallery thrill out of this kind of
romance. He saw even the emotion among American colleges
over the tragedy of a professor and some students. It
certainly was a big affair. Marjory of course was everything in
one way, but that, to the world, was not a big affair. It was the
romance of the Wainwright party in its simplicity that to the
American world was arousing great sensation; one that in the
old days would have made his heart leap like a colt.

Still, when batteries had fought each other savagely, and
horse, foot and guns were now about to make a general
advance, it was difficult, he could see, to stir men to think and
feel out of the present zone of action; to adopt for a time in fact
the thoughts and feelings of the other side of the world. It made
Coleman dejected as he saw clearly that the task was wholly on
his own shoulders.

Of course they were men who when at home
manifested the most gentle and wide-reaching feelings; most of
them could not by any possibility have slapped a kitten merely
for the prank and yet all of them who had seen an unknown
man shot through the head in battle had little more to think of it
than if the man had been a rag-baby. Tender they might be;
poets they might be; but they were all horned with a
provisional, temporary, but absolutely essential callouse which
was formed by their existence amid war with its quality of
making them always think of the sights and sounds concealed
in their own direct future.

They had been simply polite. " Yes ? " said one to Coleman.
"How many people in the party? Are they all Americans? Oh, I
suppose it will be quite right. Your minister in Constantinople
will arrange that easily. Where did you say? At Nikopolis?
Well, we conclude that the Turks will make no stand between
here and Pentepigadia. In that case your Nikopolis will be
uncovered unless the garrison at Prevasa intervenes. That
garrison at Prevasa, by the way, may make a deal of trouble.
Remember Plevna."

" Exactly how far is it to Nikopolis? " asked Coleman.

" Oh, I think it is about thirty kilometers," replied the
others. " There is a good miltary road as soon as you cross the
Louros river. I've got the map of the Austrian general staff.
Would you like to look at it?"

Coleman studied the map, speeding with his eye rapidly to
and fro between Arta and Nikopolis. To him it was merely a
brown lithograph of mystery, but he could study the distances.

He had received a cordial invitation from the com-
mander of the cavalry to go with him for another ride
into Turkey, and he inclined to believe that his project
would be furthered if he stuck close to the cavalry. So
he rode back to the cavalry camp and went
peacefully to sleep on the sod. He awoke in the
morning with chattering teeth to find his dragoman
saying that the major had unaccountably withdrawn
his loan of the two troop horses. Coleman of course
immediately said to himself that the dragoman was
lying a-gain in order to prevent another expedition
into ominous Turkey, but after all if the commander,
of the cavalry had suddenly turned the light of his
favour from the correspondent it was only a proceeding
consistent with the nature which Coleman now
thought he was beginning to discern, a nature which
can never think twice in the same place, a gageous
mind which drifts, dissolves, combines, vanishes with
the ability of an aerial thing until the man of the
north feels that when he clutches it with full knowledge of his
senses he is only the victim of his ardent
imagination. It is the difference in standards, in
creeds, which is the more luminous when men call out that
they are all alike.

So Coleman and his dragoman loaded their traps and moved
out to again invade Turkey. It was not yet clear daylight, but
they felt that they might well start early since they were no
longer mounted men.

On the way to the bridge, the dragoman, although he was
curiously in love with his forty francs a day and his
opportunities, ventured a stout protest, based apparently upon
the fact that after all this foreigner, four days out from Athens
was somewhat at his mercy. " Meester Coleman," he said,
stopping suddenly, " I think we make no good if we go there.
Much better we wait Arta for our horse. Much better. I think
this no good. There is coming one big fight and I think much
better we go stay Arta. Much better."

" Oh, come off," said Coleman. And in clear language he
began to labour with the man. " Look here, now, if you think
you are engaged in steering a bunch of wooden-headed guys
about the Acropolis, my dear partner of my joys and sorrows,
you are extremely mistaken. As a matter of fact you are now the
dragoman of a war correspondent and you were engaged and
are paid to be one. It becomes necessary that you make good.
Make good, do you understand? I'm not out here to be buncoed
by this sort of game."  He continued indefinitely in this strain
and at intervals he asked sharply Do you understand ?

Perhaps the dragoman was dumbfounded that the laconic
Coleman could on occasion talk so much, or perhaps he
understood everything and was impressed by the
argumentative power. At any rate he suddenly wilted. He made
a gesture which was a protestation of martyrdom and picking up
his burden proceeded on his way.

When they reached the bridge, they saw strong columns of
Greek infantry, dead black in the dim light, crossing the stream
and slowly deploying on the other shore. It was a bracing sight
to the dragoman, who then went into one of his absurd
babbling moods, in which he would have talked the head off
any man who was not born in a country laved by the childish
Mediterranean. Coleman could not understand what he said to
the soldiers as they passed, but it was evidently all grandiose
nonsense.

Two light batteries had precariously crossed the rickety
bridge during the night, and now this force of several thousand
infantry, with the two batteries, was moving out over the
territory which the cavalry had reconnoitered on the previous
day. The ground being familiar to Coleman, he no longer knew a
tremour, and, regarding his dragoman, he saw that that
invaluable servitor was also in better form. They marched until
they found one of the light batteries unlimbered and aligned on
the lake of grass about a mile from where parts of the white
house appeared above the tree-tops. Here the dragoman talked
with the captain of artillery, a tiny man on an immense horse,
who for some unknown reason told him that this force was going
to raid into Turkey and try to swing around the opposing army's
right flank. He announced, as he showed his teeth in a smile,
that it would be very, very dangerous work. The dragoman
precipitated himself upon Coleman.

" This is much danger. The copten he tell me the trups go
now in back of the Turks. It will be much danger. I think much
better we go Arta wait for horse. Much better." Coleman,
although be believed he despised the dragoman, could not help
but be influenced by his fears. They were, so to speak, in a
room with one window, and only the dragoman looked forth
from the window, so if he said that what he saw outside
frightened him, Coleman was perforce frightened also in a
measure. But when the correspondent raised
his eyes he saw the captain of the battery looking at him, his
teeth still showing in a smile, as if his information, whether true
or false, had been given to convince the foreigner that the
Greeks were a very superior and brave people, notably one little
officer of artillery. He had apparently assumed that Coleman
would balk from venturing with such a force upon an excursion
to trifle with the rear of a hard fighting Ottoman army. He
exceedingly disliked that man, sitting up there on his tall horse
and grinning like a cruel little  ape with a secret. In truth,
Coleman was taken back at the outlook, but he could no more refrain
from instantly accepting this half-concealed challenge than he could
have refrained from resenting an ordinary form of insult. His mind was
not at peace, but the small vanities are very large. He was perfectly
aware that he was, being misled into the thing by an odd pride, but
anyhow, it easily might turn out to be a stroke upon the doors of
Nikopolis. He nodded and smiled at the officer in grateful
acknowledgment of his service.

The infantry was moving steadily a-field. Black blocks of men
were trailing in column slowly over the plain. They were not
unlike the backs of dominoes on a green baize table ; they were
so vivid, so startling. The correspondent and his servant
followed them. Eventually they overtook two companies in
command of a captain, who seemed immensely glad to have the
strangers with him. As they marched, the captain spoke through
the dragoman upon the virtues of his men, announcing with
other news the fact that his first sergeant was the bravest man in
the world.

A number of columns were moving across the plain parallel to
their line of march, and the whole force seemed to have orders
to halt when they reached a long ditch about four hundred yards
from where the shore of the plain arose to the luxuriant groves
with the cupola of the big white house sticking above them. The
soldiers lay along the ditch, and the bravest man in the world
spread his blanket on the ground for the captain, Coleman and
himself. During a long pause Coleman tried to elucidate the question
of why the Greek soldiers wore heavy overcoats, even in the bitter
heat of midday, but he could only learn that the dews, when they
came, were very destructive to the lungs, Further, he convinced himself
anew that talking through an interpreter to the minds of other
men was as satisfactory as looking at landscape through a
stained glass window.

After a time there was, in front, a stir near where a curious
hedge of dry brambles seemed to outline some sort of a garden
patch. Many of the soldiers exclaimed and raised their guns. But
there seemed to come a general understanding to the line that it
was wrong to fire. Then presently into the open came a dirty
brown figure, and Coleman could see through his glasses that
its head was crowned with a dirty fez which had once been
white. This indicated that the figure was that of one of the
Christian peasants of Epirus. Obedient to the captain, the
sergeant arose and waved invitation. The peasant wavered,
changed his mind, was obviously terror-stricken, regained
confidence and then began to advance circuitously toward
the Greek lines. When he arrived within hailing dis- tance, the
captain, the sergeant, Coleman's dragoman and many of the
soldiers yelled human messages, and a moment later he was
seen to be a poor, yellow-faced stripling with a body which
seemed to have been first twisted by an ill-birth and afterward
maimed by either labour or oppression, these being often
identical in their effects.

His reception of the Greek soldiery was no less fervid than
their welcome of him to their protection. He threw his grimy fez
in the air and croaked out cheers, while tears wet his cheeks.
When he had come upon the right side of the ditch he ran
capering among them and the captain, the sergeant, the
dragoman and a number of soldiers received wild embraces and
kisses. He made a dash at Coleman, but Coleman was now wary
in the game, and retired dexterously behind different groups
with a finished appearance of not noting that the young man
wished to greet him.

Behind the hedge of dry brambles there were more
indications of life, and the peasant stood up and made
beseeching gestures. Soon a whole flock of miserable people
had come out to the Greeks, men, women and children, in crude
and comic smocks, prancing here and there, uproariously
embracing and kissing their deliverers. An old, tearful, toothless
hag flung herself rapturously into the arms of the captain, and
Coleman's brick-and-iron soul was moved to admiration
at the way in which the officer administered a chaste salute
upon the furrowed cheek. The dragoman told the
correspondent that the Turks had run away from the village on
up a valley toward Jannina. Everybody was proud and happy.
A major of infantry came from the rear at this time and asked
the captain in sharp tones who were the two strangers in
civilian attire. When the captain had answered correctly the
major was immediately mollified, and had it announced to the
correspondent that his battalion was going to move
immediately into the village, and that he would be delighted to
have his company.

The major strode at the head of his men with the group of
villagers singing and dancing about him and looking upon him
as if he were a god. Coleman and the dragoman, at the officer's
request, marched one on either side of him, and in this manner
they entered the village. From all sorts of hedges and thickets,
people came creeping out to pass into a delirium of joy. The
major borrowed three little pack horses with rope-bridles, and
thus mounted and followed by the clanking column, they rode
on in triumph.

It was probably more of a true festival than most men
experience even in the longest life time. The major with his
Greek instinct of drama was a splendid personification of poetic
quality; in fact he was himself almost a lyric. From time to time
he glanced back at Coleman with eyes half dimmed with appreciation.
The people gathered flowers, great blossoms of purple and corn colour.
They sprinkled them over the three horsemen and flung them
deliriously under the feet of the little nags. Being now mounted
Coleman had no difficulty in avoiding the embraces of the
peasants, but he felt to the tips of his toes an abandonment to a
kind of pleasure with which he was not at all familiar. Riding
thus amid cries of thanksgiving addressed at him equally with
the others, he felt a burning virtue and quite lost his old self in
an illusion of noble be. nignity. And there continued the
fragrant hail of blossoms.

Miserable little huts straggled along the sides of the village
street as if they were following at the heels of the great white
house of the bey. The column proceeded northward,
announcing laughingly to the glad villagers that they would
never see another Turk. Before them on the road was here and
there a fez from the head of a fled Turkish soldier and they lay
like drops of blood from some wounded leviathan. Ultimately it
grew cloudy. It even rained slightly. In the misty downfall the
column of soldiers in blue was dim as if it were merely a long
trail of low-hung smoke.

They came to the ruins of a church and there the major
halted his battalion. Coleman worried at his dragoman to
learn if the halt was only temporary. It was a long time before
there was answer from the major, for he had drawn up his men in platoons
and was addressing them in a speech as interminable as any that
Coleman had heard in Greece. The officer waved his arms and
roared out evidently the glories of patriotism and soldierly
honour, the glories of their ancient people, and he may have
included any subject in this wonderful speech, for the reason
that he had plenty of time in which to do it. It was impossible to
tell whether the oration was a good one or bad one, because the
men stood in their loose platoons without discernible feelings
as if to them this appeared merely as one of the inevitable
consequences of a campaign, an established rule of warfare.
Coleman ate black bread and chocolate tablets while the
dragoman hovered near the major with the intention of
pouncing upon him for information as soon as his lungs yielded
to the strain upon them.

The dragoman at last returned with a very long verbal
treatise from the major, who apparently had not been as
exhausted after his speech to the men as one would think. The
major had said that he had been ordered to halt here to form a
junction with some of the troops coming direct from Arta, and
that he expected that in the morning the army would be
divided and one wing would chase the retreating Turks on
toward Jannina, while the other wing would advance upon
Prevasa because the enemy had a garrison there which had not
retreated an inch, and, although it was
cut off, it was necessary to send either a force to hold it in its
place or a larger force to go through with the business of
capturing it. Else there would be left in the rear of the left flank
of a Greek advance upon Jannina a body of the enemy which at
any moment might become active. The major said that his
battalion would probably form part of the force to advance
upon Prevasa. Nikopolis was on the road to Prevasa and only
three miles away from it.






CHAPTER XI.

Coleman spent a long afternoon in the drizzle Enveloped in
his macintosh he sat on a boulder in the lee of one of the old
walls and moodily smoked cigars and listened to the ceaseless
clatter of tongues. A ray of light penetrated the mind of the
dragoman and he laboured assiduously with wet fuel until he
had accomplished a tin mug of coffee. Bits of cinder floated in
it, but Coleman rejoiced and was kind to the dragoman.

The night was of cruel monotony. Afflicted by the wind and
the darkness, the correspondent sat with nerves keyed high
waiting to hear the pickets open fire on a night attack. He was
so unaccountably sure that there would be a tumult and panic
of this kind at some time of the night that he prevented himself
from getting a reasonable amount of rest. He could hear the
soldiers breathing in sleep all about him. He wished to arouse
them from this slumber which, to his ignorance, seemed stupid.
The quality of mysterious menace in the great gloom and the
silence would have caused him to pray if prayer would have
transported him magically to New York and made him a young
man with no coat playing billiards at his club.

The chill dawn came at last and with a fine elation which ever
follows a dismal night in war; an elation which bounds in the
bosom as soon as day has knocked the shackles from a
trembling mind. Although Coleman had slept but a short time he
was now as fresh as a total abstainer coming from the bath. He
heard the creak of battery wheels; he saw crawling bodies of
infantry moving in the dim light like ghostly processions. He felt
a tremendous virility come with this new hope in the daylight.
He again took satis. faction in his sentimental journey. It was a
shining affair. He was on active service, an active service of the
heart, and he' felt that he was a strong man ready to conquer
difficulty even as the olden heroes conquered difficulty. He
imagined himself in a way like them. He, too, had come out to
fight for love with giants, dragons and witches. He had never
known that he could be so pleased with that kind of a parallel.

The dragoman announced that the major had suddenly lent
their horses to some other people, and after cursing this
versatility of interest, he summoned his henchmen and they
moved out on foot, following the sound of the creaking wheels.
They came in time to a bridge, and on the side of this bridge
was a hard military road which sprang away in two directions,
north and west. Some troops were creeping out the westward
way and the dragoman pointing at them
said: " They going Prevasa. That is road to Nikopolis."
Coleman grinned from ear to car and slapped
his dragoman violently on the shoulder. For a moment he
intended to hand the man a louis of reward, but he changed his
mind.

Their traps were in the way of being heavy, but they minded
little since the dragoman was now a victim of the influence of
Coleman's enthusiasm. The road wound along the base of the
mountain range, sheering around the abutments in wide white
curves and then circling into glens where immense trees spread
their shade over it. Some of the great trunks were oppressed
with vines green as garlands, and these vines even ran like
verdant foam over the rocks. Streams of translucent water
showered down from the hills, and made pools in which every
pebble, every eaf of a water plant shone with magic lustre, and if
the bottom of a pool was only of clay, the clay glowed with
sapphire light. The day was fair. The country was part of that
land which turned the minds of its ancient poets toward a more
tender dreaming, so that indeed their nymphs would die, one is
sure, in the cold mythology of the north with its storms amid the
gloom of pine forests. It was all wine to Coleman's spirit. It
enlivened him to think of success with absolute surety. To be
sure one of his boots began soon to rasp his toes, but he gave
it no share of his attention. They passed at a much faster pace
than the troops, and everywhere they met laughter and confidence
and the cry. " On to Prevasa! "

At midday they were at the heels of the advance battalion,
among its stragglers, taking its white dust into their throats and
eyes. The dragoman was waning and he made a number of
attempts to stay Coleman, but no one could have had influence
upon Coleman's steady rush with his eyes always straight to
the front as if thus to symbolize his steadiness of purpose.
Rivulets of sweat marked the dust on his face, and two of his
toes were now paining as if they were being burned off. He was
obliged to concede a privilege of limping, but he would not
stop.

At nightfall they halted with the outpost batallion of the
infantry. All the cavalry had in the meantirne come up and they
saw their old friends. There was a village from which the
Christian peasants came and cheered like a trained chorus.
Soldiers were driving a great flock of fat sheep into a corral.
They had belonged to a Turkish bey and they bleated as if they
knew that they were now mere spoils of war. Coleman lay on the
steps of the bey's house smoking with his head on his blanket
roll. Camp fires glowed off in the fields. He was now about four
miles from Nikopolis.

Within the house, the commander of the cavalry was writing
dispatches. Officers clanked up and down the stairs. The
dashing young captain came and said that there would be a general
assault on Prevasa at the dawn of the next day. Afterward the dragoman
descended upon the village and in some way wrenched a little grey horse
from an inhabitant. Its pack saddle was on its back and it would
very handily carry the traps. In this matter the dragoman did not
consider his master; he considered his own sore back.

Coleman ate more bread and chocolate tablets and also some
tinned sardines. He was content with the day's work. He did not
see how he could have improved it. There was only one route by
which the Wainwright party could avoid him, and that was by
going to Prevasa and thence taking ship. But since Prevasa was
blockaded by a Greek fleet, he conceived that event to be
impossible. Hence, he had them hedged on this peninsula and
they must be either at Nikopolis or Prevasa. He would probably
know all early in the morning. He reflected that he was too tired
to care if there might be a night attack and then wrapped in his
blankets he went peacefully to sleep in the grass under a big
tree with the crooning of some soldiers around their fire
blending into his slumber.

And now, although the dragoman had performed a number of
feats of incapacity, he achieved during the one hour of
Coleman's sleeping a blunder which for real finish was simply a
perfection of art. When Coleman, much later, extracted the full
story, it appeared that ringing. events happened during that single
hour of sleep. Ten minutes after he had lain down for a night of
oblivion, the battalion of infantry, which had advanced a little beyond
the village, was recalled and began a hurried night march back on the
way it had so festively come. It was significant enough to appeal
to almost any mind, but the dragoman was able to not
understand it. He remained jabbering to some acquaintances
among the troopers. Coleman had been asleep his hour when the
dashing young captain perceived the dragoman, and completely
horrified by his presence at that place, ran to him and whispered
to him swiftly that the game was to flee, flee, flee. The wing of the
army which had advanced northward upon Jannina had already
been tumbled back by the Turks and all the other wing had been
recalled to the Louros river and there was now nothing practically
between him and his sleeping master and the enemy but a cavalry
picket. The cavalry was immediately going to make a forced
march to the rear. The stricken dragoman could even then see
troopers getting into their saddles. He, rushed to, the, tree, and
in. a panic simply bundled Coleman upon his feet before he was
awake. He stuttered out his tale, and the dazed, correspondent
heard it punctuated by the steady trample of the retiring cavalry.
The dragoman saw a man's face then turn in a flash from an
expression of luxurious drowsiness to an expression of utter
malignancy. However, he was in too much of a hurry to be afraid
of it; he ran off to the little grey horse and frenziedly but
skilfully began to bind the traps upon the packsaddle. He
appeared in a moment tugging at the halter. He could only
say: "Come! Come! Come! Queek! Queek! " They slid hurriedly
down a bank to the road and started to do again that which
they had accomplished with considerable expenditure of
physical power during the day. The hoof beats of the cavalry
had already died away and the mountains shadowed them in
lonely silence. They were the rear guard after the rear guard.

The dragoman muttered hastily his last dire rumours. Five
hundred Circassian cavalry were coming. The mountains were
now infested with the dread Albanian irregulars, Coleman had
thought in his daylight tramp that he had appreciated the noble
distances, but he found that he knew nothing of their nobility
until he tried this night stumbling. And the hoofs of the little
horse made on the hard road more noise than could be made by
men beating with hammers upon brazen cylinders. The
correspondent glanced continually up at the crags. From the
other side he could sometimes hear the metallic clink of water
deep down in a glen. For the first time in his life he seriously
opened the flap of his holster and let his fingers remain on the
handle of his revolver. From just in front of
him he could hear the chattering of the dragoman's teeth which
no attempt at more coolness could seem to prevent. In the
meantime the casual manner of the little grey horse struck
Coleman with maddening vividness. If the blank darkness was
simply filled with ferocious Albanians, the horse did not care a
button; he leisurely put his feet down with a resounding ring.
Coleman whispered hastily to the dragoman. " If they rush us,
jump down the bank, no matter how deep it is. That's our only
chance. And try to keep together."

All they saw of the universe was, in front of them,
a place faintly luminous near their feet, but fading in
six yards to the darkness of a dungeon. This repre-
sented the bright white road of the day time. It had
no end. Coleman had thought that he could tell
from the very feel of the air some of the landmarks of
his daytime journey, but he had now no sense of
location at all. He would not have denied that he
was squirming on his belly like a worm through black
mud.
They went on and on. Visions of his past were sweeping
through Coleman's mind precisely as they are said to sweep
through the mind of a drowning person. But he had no regret
for any bad deeds; he regretted merely distant hours of peace
and protection. He was no longer a hero going to rescue his
love. He was a slave making a gasping attempt to escape
from the most incredible tyranny of circumstances. He half
vowed to himself that if the God whom he had in no wise
heeded, would permit him to crawl out of this slavery he would
never again venture a yard toward a danger any greater than
may be incurred from the police of a most proper metropolis. If
his juvenile and uplifting thoughts of other days had
reproached him he would simply have repeated and repeated:
"Adventure be damned."

It became known to them that the horse had to be led. The
debased creature was asserting its right to do as it had been
trained, to follow its customs; it was asserting this right during
a situation which required conduct superior to all training and
custom. It was so grossly conventional that Coleman would
have understood that demoniac form of anger which sometimes
leads men to jab knives into warm bodies. Coleman from
cowardice tried to induce the dragoman to go ahead leading the
horse, and the dragoman from cowardice tried to induce
Coleman to go ahead leading the horse. Coleman of course
had to succumb. The dragoman was only good to walk behind
and tearfully whisper maledictions as he prodded the flanks of
their tranquil beast.

In the absolute black of the frequent forests, Coleman could
not see his feet and he often felt like a man walking forward to
fall at any moment down a thousand yards of chasm. He heard
whispers; he saw skulking figures, and these frights turned out to be the
voice of a little trickle of water or the effects of wind among the
leaves, but they were replaced by the same terrors in slightly
different forms.

Then the poignant thing interpolated. A volley crashed
ahead of them some half of a mile away and another volley
answered from a still nearer point. Swishing noises which the
correspondent had heard in the air he now know to have been
from the passing of bullets. He and the dragoman came stock
still. They heard three other volleys sounding with the abrupt
clamour of a hail of little stones upon a hollow surface. Coleman
and the dragoman came close together and looked into the
whites of each other's eyes. The ghastly horse at that moment
stretched down his neck and began placidly to pluck the grass
at the roadside. The two men were equally blank with fear and
each seemed to seek in the other some newly rampant manhood
upon which he could lean at this time. Behind them were the
Turks. In front of them was a fight in the darkness. In front it
was mathematic to suppose in fact were also the Turks. They
were barred; enclosed; cut off. The end was come.

Even at that moment they heard from behind them the sound
of slow, stealthy footsteps. They  both wheeled instantly,
choking with this additional terror. Coleman saw the dragoman
move swiftly to the side of the road, ready to jump into
whatever abyss happened to be there. Coleman still gripped the halter
as if it were in truth a straw. The stealthy footsteps
were much nearer. Then it was that an insanity came
upon him as if fear had flamed up within him until it
gave him all the magnificent desperation of a madman.
He jerked the grey horse broadside to the approaching
mystery, and grabbing out his revolver
aimed it from the top of his improvised bulwark. He
hailed the darkness.

"Halt. Who's there?" He had expected his voice to sound like
a groan, but instead it happened to sound clear, stern,
commanding, like the voice of a young sentry at an
encampment of volunteers. He did not seem to have any
privilege of selection as to the words. They were born of
themselves.

He waited then, blanched and hopeless, for death to wing
out of the darkness and strike him down. He heard a voice. The
voice said: " Do you speak English? " For one or two seconds
he could not even understand English, and then the great fact
swelled up and within him. This voice with all its new quavers
was still undoubtedly the voice of Prof. Harrison B.Wainwright
of Washurst College







CHAPTER XII.

A CHANGE flashed over Coleman as if it had come from an
electric storage. He had known the professor long, but he had
never before heard a quaver in his voice, and it was this little
quaver that seemed to impel him to supreme disregard of the
dangers which he looked upon as being the final dangers. His
own voice had not quavered.

When he spoke, he spoke in a low tone, it was the voice of
the master of the situation. He could hear his dupes fluttering
there in the darkness. " Yes," he said, " I speak English. There
is some danger. Stay where you are and make no noise." He
was as cool as an iced drink. To be sure the circumstances had
in no wise changed as to his personal danger, but beyond the
important fact that there were now others to endure it with him,
he seemed able to forget it in a strange, unauthorized sense of
victory. It came from the professor's quavers.

Meanwhile he had forgotten the dragoman, but he recalled
him in time to bid him wait. Then, as well concealed as a monk
hiding in his cowl, he tip-toed back into a group of people who
knew him intimately.

He discerned two women mounted on little horses and about
them were dim men. He could hear them breathing hard. " It is
all right" he began smoothly. "You only need to be very careful---"

Suddenly out of the blackness projected a half
phosphorescent face. It was the face of the little professor. He
stammered. " We-we-do you really speak English? " Coleman in
his feeling of superb triumph could almost have laughed. His
nerves were as steady as hemp, but he was in haste and his
haste allowed him to administer rebuke to his old professor.

" Didn't you hear me ? " he hissed through his tightening lips.
" They are fighting just ahead of us on the road and if you want
to save yourselves don't waste time."

Another face loomed faintly like a mask painted in dark grey.
It belonged to Coke, and it was a mask figured in profound
stupefaction. The lips opened and tensely breathed out the
name: " Coleman." Instantly the correspondent felt about him
that kind of a tumult which tries to suppress itself. He knew that
it was the most theatric moment of his life. He glanced quickly
toward the two figures on horseback. He believed that one was
making foolish gesticulation while the other sat rigid and silent.
This latter one he knew to be Marjory. He was content that she
did not move. Only a woman who was glad he had come but did
not care for him would have moved. This applied directly to
what he thought he knew of Marjory's nature.

There was confusion among the students, but Coleman
suppressed it as in such situation might a centurion. " S-s-steady! "
He seized the arm of the professor and drew him
forcibly close. " The condition is this," he whispered rapidly.
"We are in a fix with this fight on up the road. I was sent after
you, but I can't get you into the Greek lines to-night. Mrs.Wainwright
and Marjory must dismount and I and
my man will take the horses on and hide them. All
the rest of you must go up about a hundred feet into
the woods and hide. When I come back, I'll hail you
and you answer low." The professor was like pulp in
his grasp. He choked out the word "Coleman" in
agony and wonder, but he obeyed with a palpable
gratitude. Coleman sprang to the side of the shadowy
figure of Marjory. " Come," he said authoritatively.
She laid in his palm a little icy cold hand and dropped
from her horse. He had an impulse to cling to the
small fingers, but he loosened them immediately, im-
parting to his manner, as well as the darkness per-
mitted him, a kind of casual politeness as if he were
too intent upon the business in hand.   He bunched
the crowd and pushed them into the wood. Then he
and the dragoman took the horses a hundred yards
onward and tethered them. No one would care if
they were stolen; the great point was to get them
where their noise would have no power of revealing the whole
party. There had been no further firing.

After he had tied the little grey horse to a tree he
unroped his luggage and carried the most of it back
to the point where the others had left the road. He
called out cautiously and received a sibilant answer.
He and the dragoman bunted among the trees until
they came to where a forlorn company was seated
awaiting them lifting their faces like frogs out of a
pond. His first question did not give them any
assurance. He said at once: "Are any of you
armed?" Unanimously they lowly breathed: "No."
He searched them out one by one and finally sank
down by the professor. He kept sort of a hypnotic
handcuff upon the dragoman, because he foresaw that
this man was really going to be the key to the best
means of escape. To a large neutral party wandering
between hostile lines there was technically no danger,
but actually there was a great deal. Both armies had
too many irregulars, lawless hillsmen come out to
fight in their own way, and if they were encountered
in the dead of night on such hazardous ground the
Greek hillsmen with their white cross on a blue field
would be precisely as dangerous as the blood-hungry
Albanians. Coleman knew that the rational way was
to reach the Greek lines, and he had no intention of
reaching the Greek lines without a tongue, and the
only tongue was in the mouth of the dragoman. He
was correct in thinking that the professor's deep knowledge of
the ancient language would give him small clue to the speech
of the modern Greek.

As he settled himself by the professor the band of students,
eight in number pushed their faces close.

He did not see any reason for speaking. There were thirty
seconds of deep silence in which he felt that all were bending to
hearken to his words of counsel The professor huskily broke
the stillness. Well *  * * what are we to do now? "

Coleman was decisive, indeed absolute. "We'll stay here until
daylight unless you care to get shot."

" All right," answered the professor. He turned and made a
useless remark to his flock. " Stay here."

Coleman asked civilly, " Have you had anything to eat?
Have you got anything to wrap around you ? "

" We have absolutely nothing," answered the professor. "
Our servants ran away and * * and then we left everything
behind us * * and I've never been in such a position in my life."

Coleman moved softly in the darkness and unbuckled some
of his traps. On his knee he broke the hard cakes of bread and
with his fingers he broke the little tablets of chocolate. These
he distributed to his people. And at this time he felt fully the
appreciation of the conduct of the eight American college
students They had not yet said a word-with the
exception of the bewildered exclamation from Coke. They all
knew him well. In any circumstance of life which as far as he
truly believed, they had yet encountered, they would have
been privileged to accost him in every form of their remarkable
vocabulary. They were as new to this game as, would have
been eight newly-caught Apache Indians if such were set to
run the elevators in the Tract Society Building. He could see
their eyes gazing at him anxiously and he could hear their deep-
drawn breaths. But they said no word. He knew that they were
looking upon him as their leader, almost as their saviour, and he
knew also that they were going to follow him without a murmur
in the conviction that he knew ten-fold more than they knew. It
occurred to him that his position was ludicrously false, but,
anyhow, he was glad. Surely it would be a very easy thing to
lead them to safety in the morning and he foresaw the credit
which would come to him. He concluded that it was beneath his
dignity as preserver to vouchsafe them many words. His
business was to be the cold, masterful, enigmatic man. It might
be said that these reflections were only half-thoughts in his
mind. Meanwhile a section of his intellect was flying hither and
thither, speculating upon the Circassian cavalry and the
Albanian guerillas and even the Greek outposts.

He unbuckled his blanket roll and taking one blanket placed
it about the shoulders of the shadow which was
Mrs.Wainwright. The shadow protested incoherently,. hut he
muttered "Oh that's all right." Then he took his other blanket
and went to the shadow which was
Marjory. It was something like putting a wrap about the
shoulders of a statue. He was base enough to linger in the
hopes that he could detect some slight trembling but as far as
lie knew she was of stone. His macintosh he folded around the
body of the professor amid quite senile protest, so senile that
the professor seemed suddenly proven to him as an old, old man, a fact
which had never occurred to Washurst or her children. Then he went
to the dragoman and pre-empted half of his blankets, The
dragoman grunted but Coleman  It would not do to have this dragoman
develop a luxurious temperament when eight American college
students were, without speech, shivering in the cold night.

Coleman really begun to ruminate upon his glory, but he
found that he could not do this well without Smoking, so he
crept away some distance from this fireless, encampment, and
bending his face to the ground at the foot of a tree he struck a
match and lit a cigar. His retun to the others would have been
somewhat in the manner of coolness as displayed on the stage
if he had not been prevented by the  necessity of making no
noise. He saw regarding him as before the dimly visible eyes of
the eight students and Marjory and her father and mother.
Then he whispered the conventional words. " Go to sleep if you can.
You'll need your strength in the morning. I and this man here will keep
watch." Three of the college students of course crawled up to
him and each said: " I'll keep watch, old man."
" No. We'll keep watch. You people try to sleep."

He deemed that it might be better to yield the dragoman his
blanket, and So he got up and leaned against a tree, holding his
hand to cover the brilliant point of his cigar. He knew perfectly
well that none of them could sleep. But he stood there
somewhat like a sentry without the attitude, but with all the
effect of responsibility.

He had no doubt but what escape to civilisation would be
easy, but anyhow his heroism should be preserved. He was the
rescuer. His thoughts of Marjory were somewhat in a puzzle.
The meeting had placed him in such a position that he had
expected a lot of condescension on his own part. Instead she
had exhibited about as much recognition of him as would a
stone fountain on his grandfather's place in Connecticut. This
in his opinion was not the way to greet the knight who had
come to the rescue of his lady. He had not expected it so to
happen. In fact from Athens to this place he had engaged
himself with imagery of possible meetings. He was vexed,
certainly, but, far beyond that, he knew a deeper adminiration
for this girl. To him she represented the sex, and so the
sex as embodied in her seemed a mystery to be feared. He
wondered if safety came on the morrow he would not surrender
to this feminine invulnerability. She had not done anything that
he had expected of her and so inasmuch as he loved her he
loved her more. It was bewitching. He half considered himself a
fool. But at any rate he thought resentfully she should be
thankful to him for having rendered her a great service.
However, when he came to consider this proposition he knew
that on a basis of absolute manly endeavour he had rendered
her little or no service.

The night was long.






CHAPTER XIII.

COLEMAN suddenly found himself looking upon his pallid
dragoman. He saw that he had been asleep crouched at the foot
of the tree. Without any exchange of speech at all he knew
there had been alarming noises. Then shots sounded from
nearby. Some were from rifles aimed in that direction and some
were from rifles opposed to them. This was distinguishable to
the experienced man, but all that Coleman knew was that the
conditions of danger were now triplicated. Unconsciously he
stretched his hands in supplication over his charges. "Don't
move! Don't move! And keep close to the ground!" All heeded
him but Marjory. She still sat straight. He himself was on his
feet, but he now knew the sound of bullets, and he knew that
no bullets had spun through the trees. He could not see her
distinctly, but it was known to him in some way that she was
mutinous. He leaned toward her and spoke as harshly as
possible. "Marjory, get down! " She wavered for a moment as if
resolved to defy him. As he turned again to peer in the direction
of the firing it went through his mind that she must love him
very much indeed. He was assured of it.
It must have been some small outpour between nervous
pickets and eager hillsmen, for it ended in a moment. The party
waited  in abasement for what seemed to them a time, and the
blue dawn began, to laggardly shift the night as they waited.
The dawn itself seemed prodigiously long in arriving at
anything like discernible landscape. When this was
consummated, Coleman, in somewhat the manner of the father
of a church, dealt bits of chocolate out to the others. He had
already taken the precaution to confer with the dragoman, so he
said : " Well, come ahead. We'll make a try for it." They arose at
his bidding and followed him to the road. It was the same broad,
white road, only that the white was in the dawning something
like the grey of a veil. It took some courage to venture upon this
thoroughfare, but Coleman stepped out-after looking quickly in
both directions. The party tramped to where the horses had
been left, and there they were found without change of a rope.
Coleman rejoiced to see that his dragoman now followed him in
the way of a good lieutenant. They both dashed in among the
trees and had the horses out into the road in a twinkle. When
Coleman turned to direct that utterly subservient, group he
knew that his face was drawn from hardship and anxiety, but he
saw everywhere the same style of face with the exception of the
face of Marjory, who looked simply of lovely marble. He
noted with a curious satisfaction, as if the thing was a tribute to
himself, that his macintosh was over the professor's shoulder,
that Marjory and her mother were each carrying a blanket, and
that, the corps of students had dutifully brought all the traps
which his dragoman had forgotten. It was grand.

He addressed them to say: " Now, approaching outposts is
very dangerous business at this time in the morning. So my
man, who can talk both Greek and Turkish, will go ahead forty
yards, and I will follow somewhere between him and you. Try
not to crowd forward."

He directed the ladies upon their horses and placed the
professor upon the little grey nag. Then they took up their line
of march. The dragoman had looked somewhat dubiously upon
this plan of having him go forty yards in advance, but he had
the utmost confidence in this new Coleman, whom yesterday he
had not known. Besides, he himself was a very gallant man
indeed, and it befitted him to take the post of danger before the
eyes of all these foreigners. In his new position he was as
proud and unreasonable as a rooster. He was continually
turning his head to scowl back at them, when only the clank of
hoofs was sounding. An impenetrable mist lay on the valley
and the hill-tops were shrouded. As for the people, they were
like mice. Coleman paid no attention to the Wainwright party,
but walked steadily along near the dragoman.

Perhaps the whole thing was a trifle absurd, but to a great
percentage, of the party it was terrible. For instance, those
eight boys, fresh from a school, could in no wise gauge the
dimensions. And if this was true of the students, it was more
distinctly true of Marjory and her mother. As for the professor,
he seemed Weighted to the earth by his love and his
responsibility.

Suddenly the dragoman wheeled and made demoniac signs.
Coleman half-turned to survey the main body, and then paid
his attention swiftly to the front. The white road sped to the top
of a hill where it seemed to make a rotund swing into oblivion.
The top of the curve was framed in foliage, and therein was a
horseman. He had his carbine slanted on his thigh, and his
bridle-reins taut. Upon sight of them he immediately wheeled
and galloped down the other slope and vanished.

The dragoman was throwing wild gestures into the air. As
Coleman looked back at the Wainwright party he saw plainly
that to an ordinary eye they might easily appear as a strong
advance of troops. The peculiar light would emphasize such
theory. The dragoman ran to him jubilantly, but he contained
now a form of intelligence which caused him to whisper; " That
was one Greek. That was one Greek-what do you call--sentree? "

Coleman addressed the others. He said: "It's all right. Come
ahead. That was a Greek picket. There is only one trouble now,
and that is to approach them easy-do you see-easy."

His obedient charges came forward at his word. When they
arrived at the top of this rise they saw nothing. Coleman was
very uncertain. He was not sure that this picket had not carried
with him a general alarm, and in that case there would soon
occur a certain amount of shooting. However, as far as he
understood the business, there was no way but forward.
Inasmuch as he did not indicate to the Wainwright party that he
wished them to do differently, they followed on doggedly after
him and the dragoman. He knew now that the dragoman's heart
had for the tenth time turned to dog-biscuit, so he kept abreast
of him. And soon together they walked into a cavalry outpost,
commanded by no less a person than the dashing young
captain, who came laughing out to meet them.

Suddenly losing all colour of war, the condition was now
such as might occur in a drawing room. Coleman felt the
importance of establishing highly conventional relations
between the captain and the Wainwright party. To compass
this he first seized his dragoman, and the dragoman,
enlightened immediately, spun a series of lies which must have
led the captain to believe that the entire heart of the American
republic had been taken out of that western continent and
transported to Greece. Coleman was proud of the captain, The
latter immediately went and bowed in the manner of the French
school and asked everybody to have a cup of coffee, although
acceptation would have proved his ruin and disgrace. Coleman
refused in the name of courtesy. He called his party forward,
and now they proceeded merely as one crowd. Marjory had
dismounted in the meantime.

The moment was come. Coleman felt it. The first rush was
from the students. Immediately he was buried in a thrashing
mob of them. "Good boy! Good boy! Great man! Oh, isn't he a
peach? How did he do it? He came in strong at the finish ! Good
boy, Coleman!" Through this mist of glowing youthful
congratulatioin he saw the professor standing at the outskirts
with direct formal thanks already moving on his lips, while near
him his wife wept joyfully. Marjory was evidently enduring
some inscrutable emotion.

After all, it did penetrate his mind that it was indecent to
accept all this wild gratitude, but there was built within him no
intention of positively declaring himself lacking in all credit, or
at least, lacking in all credit in the way their praises defined it.
In truth he had assisted them, but he had been at the time
largely engaged in assisting himself, and their coming had been
more of a boon to his loneliness than an addition to his care.
However, he soon had no difficulty in
making his conscience appropriate every line in these hymns
sung in his honour. The students, curiously wise of men,
thought his conduct quite perfect. " Oh, say, come off ! " he
protested. " Why, I didn't do anything. You fellows are crazy.
You would have gotten in all right by yourselves. Don't act like
asses-"

As soon as the professor had opportunity he came to
Coleman. He was a changed little man, and his extraordinary
bewilderment showed in his face. It was the disillusion and
amazement of a stubborn mind that had gone implacably in its
one direction and found in the end that the direction was all
wrong, and that really a certain mental machine had not been
infallible. Coleman remembered what the American minister in
Athens had described of his protests against the starting of the
professor's party on this journey, and of the complete refusal of
the professor to recognise any value in the advice. And here
now was the consequent defeat. It was mirrored in the
professor's astonished eyes. Coleman went directly to his dazed
old teacher. " Well, you're out of it now, professor," he said
warmly. " I congratulate you on your escape, sir." The
professor looked at him, helpless to express himself, but the
correspondent was at that time suddenly enveloped in the
hysterical gratitude of Mrs. Wainwright, who hurled herself
upon him with extravagant manifestations. Coleman played his
part with skill. To both the professor and Mrs. Wainwright his
manner was a combination of modestly filial affection and a
pretentious disavowal of his having done anything at all. It
seemed to charm everybody but Marjory. It irritated him to see
that she was apparently incapable of acknowledging that he was a
grand man.

He was actually compelled to go to her and offer
congratulations upon her escape, as he had congratulated the
professor.
If his manner to her parents had been filial, his manner to her
was parental. " Well, Marjory," he said kindly, "you have been
in considerable danger. I suppose you're glad to be through
with it." She at that time made no reply, but by her casual turn
he knew that he was expected to walk along by her side. The
others knew it, too, and the rest of the party left them free to
walk side by side in the rear.

" This is a beautiful country here-abouts if one gets a good
chance to see it," he remarked. Then he added: "But I suppose
you had a view of it when you were going out to Nikopolis? "

She answered in muffled tones. "Yes, we thought it very
beautiful."

Did you note those streams from the mountains " That
seemed to me the purest water I'd ever seen, but I bet it would
make one ill to drink it. There is, you know, a prominent
German chemist who has almost proven
that really pure water is practical poison to the human
stomach."

"Yes ? " she said.

There was a period of silence, during which he was perfectly
comfortable because he knew that she was ill at ease. If the
silence was awkward, she was suffering from it. As for himself,
he had no inclination to break it. His position was, as far as the
entire Wainwright party was concerned, a place where he could
afford to wait. She turned to him at last. "Of course, I know
how much you have done for us, and I want you to feel that we
all appreciate it deeply-deeply." There was discernible to the ear
a certain note of desperation.

" Oh, not at all," he said generously. " Not at all. I didn't do
anything. It was quite an accident. Don't let that trouble you
for a moment."

"Well, of course you would say that," she said more
steadily. " But I-we-we know how good and how-brave it was
in you to come for us, and I--we must never forget it."

As a matter of fact," replied Coleman, with an appearance
of ingenuous candor, " I was sent out here by the Eclipse to
find you people, and of course I worked rather hard to reach
you, but the final meeting was purely accidental and does not
redound to my credit in the least."

As he had anticipated, Marjory shot him a little glance of
disbelief. " Of course you would say that," she repeated with
gloomy but flattering conviction.

" Oh, if I had been a great hero," he said smiling, "no doubt
I would have kept up this same manner which now sets so well
upon me, but I am telling you the truth when I say that I had no
part in your rescue at all."

She became slightly indignant. " Oh, if you care to tell us
constantly that you were of no service to us, I don't see what
we can do but continue to declare that you were."

Suddenly he felt vulgar. He spoke to her this time with real
meaning. " I beg of 'you never to mention it again. That will be
the best way."

But to this she would not accede. "No, we will often want to
speak of it."

He replied "How do you like Greece? Don't you think that
some of these ruins are rather out of shape in the popular
mind? Now, for my part, I would rather look at a good strong
finish at a horserace than to see ten thousand Parthenons in a
bunch."

She was immediately in the position of defending him from
himself. "You would rather see no such thing. You shouldn't
talk in that utterly trivial way. I like the Parthenon, of course,
but I can't think of it now because my head. is too full of my
escape from where I was so-so frightened."

Coleman grinned. " Were you really frightened?"

" Naturally," she answered. " I suppose I was more
frightened for mother and father, but I was frightened enough
for myself. It was not-not a nice thing."

"No, it wasn't," said Coleman. "I could hardly believe my
senses, when the minister at Athens told me that, you all had
ventured into such a trap, and there is no doubt but what you
can be glad that you are well out of it."

She seemed to have some struggle with herself and then
she deliberately said: "Thanks to you."

Coleman embarked on what he intended to make a series of
high-minded protests. " Not at all-" but at that moment the
dragoman whirled back from the van-guard with a great
collection of the difficulties which had been gathering upon
him. Coleman was obliged to resign Marjory and again take up
the active leadership. He disposed of the dragoman's
difficulties mainly by declaring that they were not difficulties at
all. He had learned that this was the way to deal with dragomen.
The fog had already lifted from the valley and, as they
passed along the wooded mountain-side the fragrance of
leaves and earth came to them. Ahead, along the hooded road,
they could see the blue clad figures of Greek infantrymen.
Finally they passed an encampment of a battalion whose line
was at a right angle to the highway. A hundred yards in advance was the
bridge across the Louros river. And there a battery of artillery
was encamped. The dragoman became involved in all sorts of
discussions with other Greeks, but Coleman stuck to his elbow
and stifled all aimless oration. The Wainwright party waited for
them in the rear in an observant but patient group.

Across a plain, the hills directly behind Arta loomed up
showing the straight yellow scar of a modern entrenchment. To
the north of Arta were some grey mountains with a dimly
marked road winding to the summit. On one side of this road
were two shadows. It took a moment for the eye to find these
shadows, but when this was accomplished it was plain that
they were men. The captain of the battery explained to the
dragoman that he did not know that they were not also Turks.
In which case the road to Arta was a dangerous path. It was no
good news to Coleman. He waited a moment in order to gain
composure and then walked back to the Wainwright party.
They must have known at once from his peculiar gravity that all
was not well. Five of the students and the professor
immediately asked: "What is it?"

He had at first some old-fashioned idea of concealing the ill
tidings from the ladies, but he perceived what flagrant nonsense
this would be in circumstances in which all were fairly likely to
incur equal dangers, and at any rate he did not see his way clear
to allow their imagination to run riot over a situation which might not
turn out to be too bad. He said slowly: " You see those
mountains over there? Well, troops have been seen there and
the captain of this battery thinks they are Turks. If they are
Turks the road to Arta is distinctly-er-unsafe."

This new blow first affected the Wainwright party as being
too much to endure. " They thought they had gone through
enough. This was a general sentiment. Afterward the emotion
took colour according to the individual character. One student
laughed and said: " Well, I see our finish."

Another student piped out: " How do they know they are
Turks? What makes them think they are Turks "

Another student expressed himself with a sigh. "This is a
long way from the Bowery."

The professor said nothing but looked annihilated; Mrs.
Wainwright wept profoundly; Marjory looked expectantly
toward Coleman.

As for the correspondent he was adamantine and reliable
and stern, for he had not the slightest idea that those men on
the distant hill were Turks at all.







CHAPTER XIV.

"OH," said a student, " this game ought to quit. I feel like
thirty cents. We didn't come out here to be pursued about the
country by these Turks. Why don't they stop it ?"

Coleman was remarking: "Really, the only sensible thing to
do now is to have breakfast. There is no use in worrying
ourselves silly over this thing until we've got to."

They spread the blankets on the ground and sat about a
feast of bread, water cress and tinned beef. Coleman was the
real host, but he contrived to make the professor appear as that
honourable person. They ate, casting their eyes from time to
time at the distant mountain with its two shadows. People
began to fly down the road from Jannina, peasants hurriedly
driving little flocks, women and children on donkeys and little
horses which they clubbed unceasingly. One man rode at a
gallop, shrieking and flailing his arms in the air. They were all
Christian peasants of Turkey, but they were in flight now
because they did not wish to be at home if the Turk was going
to return and reap revenge for his mortification. The
Wainwright party looked at Coleman in abrupt questioning.

"Oh, it's all right," he said, easily. "They are always taking on
that way."

Suddenly the dragoman gave a shout and dashed up the
road to the scene of a melee where a little ratfaced groom was
vociferously defending three horses from some Greek officers,
who as vociferously were stating their right to requisition them.
Coleman ran after his dragoman. There was a sickening pow-wow,
but in the end Coleman, straight and easy in the saddle,
came cantering back on a superb open-mouthed snorting bay
horse. He did not mind if the half-wild animal plunged crazily. It
was part of his role. "They were trying to steal my horses," he
explained. He leaped to the ground, and holding the horse by
the bridle, he addressed his admiring companions. " The groom-
the man who has charge of the horses -says that he thinks that
the people on the mountain-side are Turks, but I don't see how
that is possible. You see-" he pointed wisely-" that road leads
directly south to Arta, and it is hardly possible that the Greek
army would come over here and leave that approach to Arta
utterly unguarded. It would be too foolish. They must have left
some men to cover it, and that is certainly what those troops
are. If you are all ready and willing, I don't see anything to do
but make a good, stout-hearted dash for Arta. It would be no
more dangerous than to sit here."
The professor was at last able to make his formal
speech. " Mr. Coleman," he said distinctly, "we place ourselves
entirely in your hands." It was some. how pitiful. This man who,
for years and years had reigned in a little college town almost
as a monarch, passing judgment with the air of one who words
the law, dealing criticism upon the universe as one to whom all
things are plain, publicly disdaining defeat as one to whom all
things are easy-this man was now veritably appealing to
Coleman to save his wife, his daughter and himself, and really
declared himself de. pendent for safety upon the ingenuity and
courage of the correspondent.

The attitude of the students was utterly indifferent. They did
not consider themselves helpless at all. they were evidently
quite ready to withstand anything but they looked frankly up to
Coleman as their intelligent leader. If they suffered any, their
only expression of it was in the simple grim slang of their
period.

" I wish I was at Coney Island."

" This is not so bad as trigonometry, but it's worse than
playing billiards for the beers."

And Coke said privately to Coleman: " Say, what in hell are
these two damn peoples fighting for, anyhow? "

When he saw that all opinions were in favour of following
him loyally, Coleman was impelled to feel a responsibility. He
was now no errant rescuer, but a properly elected leader
of fellow beings in distress. While one
of the students held his horse, he took the dragoman for
another consultation with the captain of the battery. The officer
was sitting on a large stone, with his eyes fixed into his field
glasses. When again questioned he could give no satisfaction
as to the identity of the troops on the distant mountain. He
merely shrugged his shoulders and said that if they were Greeks
it was very good, but if they were Turks it was very bad. He
seemed more occupied in trying to impress the correspondent
that it was a matter of soldierly indifference to himself.
Coleman, after loathing him sufficiently in silence, returned to
the others and said: " Well, we'll chance it."

They looked to him to arrange the caravan. Speaking to the
men of the party he said: " Of course, any one of you is
welcome to my horse if you can ride it, but-if you're not too
tired-I think I had myself 

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