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The Strand Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 97, January to June 1899

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Title: The Strand Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 97, January to June 1899

Author: Various

Editor: George Newnes


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRAND MAGAZINE, VOL. 17, NO. 97, JANUARY TO JUNE 1899 ***

[Illustration: "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, SIR?"

(_See page 10._)]




                                  THE
                            STRAND MAGAZINE

                       _An Illustrated Monthly_


                               EDITED BY
                             GEORGE NEWNES

                              Vol. XVII.

                           _JANUARY TO JUNE_

                                London:
    GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
                       AND EXETER STREET, STRAND

                                 1899

                         THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

                   Vol. xvii. JANUARY, 1899. No. 97.




_Round the Fire._[1]

BY A. CONAN DOYLE.


VIII.--THE STORY OF THE JAPANNED BOX.

It _was_ a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those
grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes
through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely to
have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I
gained--well, as I tell you the story you will learn what I gained.

[1] Copyright, 1899, by George Newnes, Limited.

I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England.
Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns,
but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have
left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and
everything is stone--stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone
for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the
heart of a great nation.

It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place,
and thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John
was a widower--his wife had died three years before--and he had been
left with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl
of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this
little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious
prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little
boys of our own. But, there--I have already revealed what it was which
I gained in Thorpe Place!

It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some of,
it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since
long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first
I came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling
stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting
plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the
garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl
inside it and such a show of roses in front.

Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of
us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time
four-and-twenty and as pretty--well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is
now--myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper,
a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man,
who acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our
meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library.
Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad
when he did not.

For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six foot three
inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic
face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian
beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if
they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary,
hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your
pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study,
but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of his age--five-and-fifty
perhaps--as any woman would wish to look upon.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE.]

But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous,
always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived
so long with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors
he spent his time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower,
or in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that
one could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in
the day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about
ten at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door.
For the rest of the day he would be in his library--save that for an
hour or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was
solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was
keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a
little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him
as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that.

It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances
of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and
Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of
their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than
I did, and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us
together. At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer
acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of
the man whom I served.

The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master
Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent
danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in
order to save him. Dripping and exhausted--for I was far more spent
than the child--I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard
the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was
the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child
was in no danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which
expressed in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which
he tried to conceal.

"One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he, turning
back through the open door.

And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I
afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save
that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room,
conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a
low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest
of furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a
small shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a
full-length photograph of a woman--I took no particular notice of the
features, but I remember that a certain gracious gentleness was the
prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black japanned box and
one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic
bands.

[Illustration: "OUR INTERVIEW WAS A SHORT ONE."]

Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I
was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led,
however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never
penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very
afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the
garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn
beside us.

"You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour,"
said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's visits
to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious
feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if
I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of
mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you
might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways."

"Why do you say relapsed?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise.

"Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous history
is unknown to you?"

"Absolutely."

"You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of
his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that
you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your
ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took
it for granted that you knew that you were in the service of 'Devil'
Bollamore."

"But why 'Devil'?" I asked.

"Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the
name of 'Devil' Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was
the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard--a
survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them."

I stared at him in amazement.

"What!" I cried, "that quiet, studious, sad-faced man?"

"The greatest rip and debauchee in England! All between ourselves,
Colmore. But you understand now what I mean when I say that a woman's
voice in his room might even now give rise to suspicions."

"But what can have changed him so?"

"Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That
was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had
thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you know, between
a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a
drunkard. He had become a slave to it--hopeless and helpless. Then she
stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took
her chance in marrying him, though she might have had the pick of a
dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and
decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house.
There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop
of it would be like blood to a tiger even now."

"Then her influence still holds him?"

"That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we all
expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways. She
feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was
like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose.
By the way, did you see a black japanned box in his room?"

"Yes."

"I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to be away,
if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black japanned box
with him. Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told you rather more than
I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest
should come to your knowledge." I could see that the worthy man was
consumed with curiosity and just a little piqued that I, the new-comer,
should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But
the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found
myself upon more confidential terms with him.

And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object
of greater interest to me. I began to understand that strangely human
look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his careworn face. He was a
man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm's length, from
morning till night, a horrible adversary, who was for ever trying to
close with him--an adversary which would destroy him body and soul
could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim,
round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden,
this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost
fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends
crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which
slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at
his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in
warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw
her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with
arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.

In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and
he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even
invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word
passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which
he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his
library (it was one of the best private libraries in England), and I
spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society,
he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window reducing
to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these
closer relations I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the
turret.

And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all
my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still
remained all that he had ever been, with the additional vice of
hypocrisy. What happened was as follows.

One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the neighbouring
village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to
my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps
round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the
light was lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the
window, which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were,
as it happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment, and
we had paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly
something broke in upon our talk and turned our thoughts away from our
own affairs.

It was a voice--the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low--so low
that it was only in that still night air that we could have heard it,
but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timbre. It
spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent--a
piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I
stood for an instant staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in
the direction of the hall-door.

"It came through the window," I said.

"We must not play the part of eaves-droppers," she answered. "We must
forget that we have ever heard it."

There was an absence of surprise in her manner which suggested a new
idea to me.

"You have heard it before," I cried.

"I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same turret. It
has happened frequently."

"Who can the woman be?"

"I have no idea. I had rather not discuss it."

[Illustration: "IT WAS THE VOICE UNDOUBTEDLY OF A WOMAN."]

Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting that
our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be, this
mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my
own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not
live there. But in that case where did she come from? It could not be
any one of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs.
Stevens. The visitor must come from without. But how?

And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was, and how
probable that some mediæval passage existed in it. There is hardly
an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the basement of
the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort it would open
through the floor. There were numerous cottages in the immediate
vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might lie among some
tangle of bramble in the neighbouring copse. I said nothing to anyone,
but I felt that the secret of my employer lay within my power.

And the more convinced I was of this the more I marvelled at the manner
in which he concealed his true nature. Often as I watched his austere
figure, I asked myself if it were indeed possible that such a man
should be living this double life, and I tried to persuade myself that
my suspicions might after all prove to be ill-founded. But there was
the female voice, there was the secret nightly rendezvous in the turret
chamber--how could such facts admit of an innocent interpretation? I
conceived a horror of the man. I was filled with loathing at his deep,
consistent hypocrisy.

Only once during all those months did I ever see him without that sad
but impassive mask which he usually presented towards his fellow-man.
For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic fires which he had
damped down so long. The occasion was an unworthy one, for the object
of his wrath was none other than the aged charwoman whom I have already
mentioned as being the one person who was allowed within his mysterious
chamber. I was passing the corridor which led to the turret--for my own
room lay in that direction--when I heard a sudden, startled scream,
and merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who is inarticulate
with passion. It was the snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I heard
his voice thrilling with anger. "You would dare!" he cried. "You
would dare to disobey my directions!" An instant later the charwoman
passed me, flying down the passage, white faced and tremulous, while
the terrible voice thundered behind her. "Go to Mrs. Stevens for your
money! Never set foot in Thorpe Place again!" Consumed with curiosity,
I could not help following the woman, and found her round the corner
leaning against the wall and palpitating like a frightened rabbit.

[Illustration: "NEVER SET FOOT IN THORPE PLACE AGAIN!"]

"What is the matter, Mrs. Brown?" I asked.

"It's master!" she gasped. "Oh 'ow 'e frightened me! If you 'ad seen
'is eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir. I thought 'e would 'ave been the death of
me."

"But what had you done?"

"Done, sir! Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of. Just laid my
'and on that black box of 'is--'adn't even opened it, when in 'e came
and you 'eard the way 'e went on. I've lost my place, and glad I am of
it, for I would never trust myself within reach of 'im again."

So it was the japanned box which was the cause of this outburst--the
box from which he would never permit himself to be separated. What was
the connection, or was there any connection between this and the secret
visits of the lady whose voice I had overheard? Sir John Bollamore's
wrath was enduring as well as fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the
charwoman, vanished from our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more.

And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all these
strange questions and put my employer's secret in my possession.
The story may leave you with some lingering doubt as to whether my
curiosity did not get the better of my honour, and whether I did not
condescend to play the spy. If you choose to think so I cannot help it,
but can only assure you that, improbable as it may appear, the matter
came about exactly as I describe it.

The first stage in this _dénouement_ was that the small room on the
turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the
worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age,
it snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a quantity of
the plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the room at the
time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the _débris_ and
brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within
his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never
had an opportunity of searching for that secret passage, the existence
of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would
have brought her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr.
Richards asking Mrs. Stevens who the woman was whom he had overheard
talking to Sir John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I
saw from her manner that it was not the first time that she had had to
answer or avoid the same question.

"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.

I confessed that I had.

"And what do _you_ think of it?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine.

"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or
not?"

"It is certainly a woman."

"Which room did you hear it from?"

"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."

"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the door as
I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just as
plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"

"Why, what else _could_ it be?"

He looked at me hard.

"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a
woman, how does she get there?"

"I don't know."

"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a practical
business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a
ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he
felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe
Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by this
time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to
me, it never reached the others.

And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless
night from neuralgia, and about mid-day I had taken a heavy dose of
chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the
indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work
there from five till seven. On this particular day I struggled against
the double effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already
mentioned that there was a recess in the library, and in this it was
my habit to work. I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness
overcame me and, falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy
sleep.

[Illustration: "SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE WAS SITTING AT HIS STUDY TABLE."]

How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke.
Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a
semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with
books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight
came through the farther window, and against this lighter background
I saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His
well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against
the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard
the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As
if in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box
which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it,
something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I
never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain that
I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be alone
in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions,
and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp,
metallic clicking, and then the voice.

Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a
voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will
ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious far-away tinkle, but
every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for they were the last
words of a dying woman.

"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I am here
at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy
to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be
strong, be strong, until we meet again."

I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could
not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying,
half sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning distant
musical words. And he--he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken
he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my
half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room,
switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his
eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless
charwoman may have seen him weeks before.

"Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?"

With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my
luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger
faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over
his features.

"My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only myself to
blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no
confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story
may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely
upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your
lips. I am proud still--God help me!--or, at least, I am proud enough
to resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled
at envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate.

"You have heard the source from which the voice comes--that voice which
has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am
aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations,
whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and
forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and
eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that,
Mr. Colmore, I acquit you.

"When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I
was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse
which brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my
side. I drank deeply of the wine of life--if there is a man living who
has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered,
my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a
necessity to me, I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it
was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent
into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a
ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me,
and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded
itself to the level of the beasts.

"But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes.
In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings
and her own death, that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang
which her fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was
removed I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that
I made oath to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She
knew only too well the hold that the devil had upon me--she who had
striven so to loosen it--and it haunted her night and day the thought
that my soul might again be within his grip.

"It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of
this invention--this phonograph--and with the quick insight of a loving
woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London
to procure the best which money could buy. When I returned she lay
actually in the throes of death. And with her last breath--the very
last that she breathed upon earth--she whispered this message into it,
a message to strengthen my resolves and to retain her influence upon my
actions. Into her ear I whispered that twice a day for ever afterwards
I should listen to her dear voice, and so, smiling at the success of
her plan, she passed gently away.

"So now you have my secret, Mr. Colmore, and you understand why this
japanned box and that which it contains is more to me than all my
ancestral home. I trust you, and I believe you to be worthy of my
trust. But after this the sight of you would be painful to me, and so
good-bye! You will find no cause to regret having left my service, but
you will understand that we must never meet again."

So this was the last time that I was ever destined to see Sir John
Bollamore, and I left him standing in his library, with his hand upon
the instrument which brought him that ever-recurring, intangible, and
yet intimate reminder from the woman whom he loved. You may have read
about his death in a carriage accident last Midsummer. I do not fancy
that it was a very unwelcome event to him.

[Illustration]




_Illustrated Interviews._


LXII.--MADAME MELBA. BY PERCY CROSS STANDING.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS SHE FIRST APPEARED IN GRAND
OPERA.--GILDA IN "RIGOLETTO," BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 15, 1887.

_From a Photo. by J. Ganz, Brussels._]

To an observant student of the world's genius it is a reflection, not
without a peculiar interest of its own, that the Australian Continent
has so far produced but one woman-singer of the first rank. Of poets
whose genius is as undoubted as their place in the world's literature
is certain Australia has given us at least two, in Henry Kendall and
the gifted but ill-fated Adam Lindsay Gordon. To the drama this, the
"least contiguous" of the four continents, has contributed Haddon
Chambers--though the creator of "Captain Swift" and "The Idler" has
now dwelt among us so long as to be regarded as a fully naturalized
"Englander." The department of imaginative literature is already
represented by quite a little army from "down under," as the eminent
names of Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," Mr. Rolf Boldrewood, Miss Ada
Cambridge, Miss Ethel Turner, Mr. Guy Boothby, and the late Marcus
Clarke bear eloquent testimony; whilst the field of critical and
biographical writing finds a worthy representative in Mr. Patchett
Martin.

But Melba stands alone. Towering head and shoulders over every other
aspirant to the highest honours of grand opera, the retirement
of Madame Patti from the operatic field has left "the Australian
Nightingale" undisputed ruler of an empire probably the proudest in the
sum of this planet's most desirable possessions. Yet these are honours
becomingly and graciously worn by one who, scarcely a decade ago, was
little more than a name to the patrons and supporters of the opera.

As I sit in her _salon_ to-day, and chat with this queenly woman,
whose greatest charm assuredly lies in her consideration for others, I
wonder whether she ever recalls that little white-robed girl (herself)
who, in far-off Melbourne, in the dead of night, startled her parents
and brought them downstairs by her playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight
Sonata." It is a pretty story, with a prettier sequel. For the parents
of that little girl had not the heart to chide their offspring for her
"precocity" (that unmeaning word in which the beginnings of genius are
so often concealed), but rather did they coax her back to bed as they
marvelled over what they had heard. Surely they must, at that early
day, have had some faint glimmering of the future in store for the
coming _prima donna_!

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA BEFORE HER DÉBUT, 1887. _From a Photo. by
Chalot, Paris._]

"Perhaps they did--I do not know," says Madame Melba, dreamily. "But
one thing I know for certain--that their daughter did not cherish
any such aspirations for a long time to come. I went quietly on with
my education--no, not my musical education, that came later--until
my marriage, which took place at the early age of seventeen. Stop,
though! I was entirely forgetting to tell you the story of what I
call 'my first appearance on any stage.' It took place at the Town
Hall, Richmond, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and I was aged _six_
at the time! What did I sing? Let me see, now! Yes, I sang 'Shells of
the Ocean' first, followed by 'Comin' thro' the Rye.' It was a great
occasion, as you may imagine, and I am by no means certain that I am
not prouder of it than of anything I have done since."

On the question as to whence--if traceable at all--Madame Melba derives
her voice and natural musical gifts, she told me that her mother was an
accomplished musician. In addition to being a beautiful pianist, she
played also the organ and the harp. Thus it was that the future _prima
donna_ was reared so to speak in the lap of Music. Her mother was her
first teacher of the piano, and afterwards her studies were aided by
the exertions of her aunts Alice and Lizzie.

"Even as a child of three or four," she continued, "I was so
passionately devoted to music that I remember frequently crawling
under the piano and remaining quiet there for hours while listening
to my mother's playing. Yes, my mother sang also, though she had not
a particularly notable voice. But her sister, my 'Aunt Lizzie,' as
I called her, possessed a soprano voice of extraordinary beauty and
quality. To this day I can remember my aunt's absolute control of her
voice, and the beauty and ease of her execution even in the highest
_pianissimo_ passages. Indeed, I feel sure my Aunt Lizzie would have
enjoyed a brilliant career as a public singer, had she adopted it."

It should be mentioned that the _diva's_ father, Mr. David Mitchell,
is a squatter resident in the Colony of Victoria, and that his several
stations are far removed from important townships. The family now
reside at Colbin Abbin Estate; but in the days when Melba was a child
they lived at "Steel's Flat," another of her father's estates, where
she was born and brought up, with intermittent visits to Melbourne.

I was interested to find that the subject of this interview can also
trace the gift of music on the paternal side of the house. To this
day her father sings in the local choir, and his daughter told me she
well remembered his voice as a deep basso of beautiful _timbre_. He
has always been passionately fond of music, and is, in addition to his
vocal talent (to quote his daughter's own expression), "a fiddler of
no mean ability." Madame Melba speaks in the most affectionate terms
of both her parents. Her mother died while the great singer was in her
teens, but Melba cherishes many sweet recollections of her.

"She was a natural artist--not as regards music only, for one remembers
it in the general expression of her life. She was, among other things,
a charming painter on china, and the dessert-service still in use at
home was decorated by her brush.

"Did my father also foster my love of music? Yes, indeed he did, to
the utmost of his power. When I was quite a baby it was my great joy,
on Sunday afternoons, to sit on my father's knee at the harmonium.
He would blow the bellows with his feet, while singing a bass
accompaniment to the hymn which I would pick out on the key-board with
one finger."

Thus, finding that the Australian singer inherits the gift of song from
either side of her family, I inquired whether this passion for music
did not begin to take shape at a very tender age.

"In illustration that that was so," she answered, "I remember once our
family moving into 'winter quarters' at one of my father's outlying
stations. I was ten years old at the time, but I know I felt furious,
on arrival, to find that there was no piano in the house. My gentle
mother consoled me with the gift of _a concertina_, which I taught
myself to play during the three months that we remained there! In those
sequestered places, in the case of country houses very far removed from
a church or chapel, it is customary for a clergyman or lay preacher
to come along on Sundays and preach to the family, the servants, and
station hands--often quite a large congregation, particularly at
shearing-time.

"One Sunday--I was then, perhaps, thirteen years old--we were visited
by a worthy man, who chanced to be a particularly poor preacher. At
the conclusion of his very long and (as we children thought) somewhat
wearisome discourse, he suggested that we should sing a hymn. There
was a harmonium in the room, and my mother asked me to play a familiar
hymn. I accordingly seated myself, but, in revenge for having been
so bored, I played--to the horror of some and the secret delight of
others--a music-hall ditty which had succeeded in penetrating our
wilderness! It was called, 'You Should See Me Dance the Polka.' In the
sequel, I received the well-merited punishment of being sent to bed for
the remainder of the day.

"It must have been about the end of the same year that I had, what I
thought at the time, a very fearsome adventure indeed! It happened
at Melbourne. I was learning to play the organ, and I had permission
occasionally to practise on the great organ in the Scots Church. Late
one afternoon I ceased playing, and fell into a reverie. When, at
last, I proceeded to leave the church, I found, to my horror, I was
locked in! My playing having ceased for some time, the sexton had
concluded I was gone, and had locked up the church and left. You cannot
conceive the agony of mind I endured. The church was very dark, and the
pulpit and altar in their grey dust-cloths looked, to my frightened
imagination, like monstrous ghosts. What should I do?... At last the
sexton returned--by the merest chance he had forgotten something, which
he came back to fetch, and so I obtained my release."

About two years after her marriage, namely, at the age of nineteen,
Melba began concert singing. At first she sang as an amateur; but so
rapidly did she betray talents of an extraordinarily high order, that
she was strongly recommended to adopt the vocal art as a profession.
Upon this advice she acted, and came to England to study. The rest is
history.

It is, however, history of an exceedingly interesting character.
It will be seen that, in shaping her public career, Madame Melba
unconsciously moved in cycles of two years. Thus, she was married at
seventeen. At nineteen she commenced to sing publicly. At twenty-one
she came to Europe in order to study the art she had elected to follow.
At twenty-three occurred her _début_ on the operatic stage.

So far as operatic England is concerned, the distinction of introducing
Melba to the Covent Garden public belongs to the late Sir Augustus
Harris, who subsequently wrote a rather remarkable letter on the
subject of the Australian _débutante's_ quickly won popularity.
Madame Melba's initial appearance on the Covent Garden stage took
place in May, 1888, as the ill-fated heroine of Donizetti's "Lucia di
Lammermoor." Her success, both with the critics and with the public,
was so spontaneous and overwhelming, that her engagement for the next
(1889) London season was rendered inevitable. The new _prima donna's_
principal appearance of 1889 was in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," while
her performance in Verdi's "Rigoletto" exhibited how rapidly, to quote
Mr. Parker's "Opera Under Augustus Harris," "Madame Melba's popularity
was increasing in this country." In 1890 she created at Covent Garden
the character of _Ophelia_ in Dr. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet," which she
had the advantage of rehearsing with the composer himself.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA IN "LAKMÉ," 1890. _From a Photo. by Dupont,
Brussels._]

In 1893 Melba went to America, to meet with a wholly unprecedented
success; but in '94 she was back at Covent Garden, to charm huge
audiences with her _Nedda_ in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and her
_Marguerite_ in "Faust." Since then the cantatrice has appeared with
regularity during the London opera season. Two of her most interesting
appearances have been in "Carmen" three years ago, when that opera
was performed with the extraordinarily strong cast of Madame Calvé as
_Carmen_, Madame Melba as _Michaela_, and M. Alvarez as _Don José_;
and in "Les Huguenotś" in 1896, when Albani was the _Valentina_, and
Melba the _Margherita de Valois_. In that season, by the way, a gloom
was cast over English musical life by the deaths of Sir Joseph Barnby
and Sir Augustus Harris, the latter being a personal friend of Madame
Melba, and of whom she cherishes many pleasant recollections.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, 1891. _From a
Photo. by Nadar, Paris._]

But then, as I told the Australian _prima donna_, in her case "pleasant
recollections" must of necessity multiply themselves, by virtue of the
numbers of the world's great ones with whom her art and her remarkable
gifts have brought her in contact. And yet she remains so wholly and
entirely a "womanly woman," that I verily believe she values the esteem
and admiration of the lowliest peasant as highly as that of the great
ones of the earth.

In respect of the personal friendships to which I have just made
reference, the _diva_ has delightful remembrances of masters like the
veteran Verdi, Charles Gounod (with whom she had the privilege of
rehearsing his "Faust" and "Roméo et Juliette"), poor Goring Thomas,
the creator of "Esmeralda," Tosti, and Puccini. In the case of the
latter composer, she studied her part in his "La Bohème" (a new
assumption) with him in Southern Italy last summer; and, if all that
we hear be true, she is destined to win fresh laurels in the same
composer's newest work, "La Tosca," in which Puccini does for Sardou's
tragic story what Verdi has done for Shakespeare's "Othello."

Nellie Melba is a woman of rare enthusiasms. In conversation with me,
she could not say too much in praise of Madame Matilde Marchesi--the
only singing-teacher she has ever had--and whom she speaks of in terms
of warmest affection and sympathy.

I asked the _prima donna_ whether she has ever experienced the
excitement and danger of a theatre fire. "Yes, on two occasions," she
told me; "in San Francisco and in London. In both cases the danger was
happily averted. At Covent Garden the outbreak happened actually on
the stage during a performance of 'Faust,' and the curtain had to be
rung down. I chanced to be in the 'wings' at the time, and while they
were battling with the flames behind the curtain, I came in front and
begged the people to remain seated. Fortunately that most terrible of
calamities, a theatre panic, was averted. As soon as I found myself
behind the scenes once more I committed the weakness of fainting."

There have been, not unnaturally, some striking incidents connected
with Melba's enormous popularity at the Paris Opera House. There is
one of them, however, to which a pathetic interest attaches by reason
of the comparatively recent death of Madame Carnot, who figured in it
in very sympathetic fashion. The opera was "Lucia di Lammermoor"--one
of Melba's greatest, if not her very greatest assumption. It happened
that the tenor, Monsieur Cossira, arrived at the Opera House feeling
very unwell, but apparently recovering before the opera began he
decided to go on. Early in the first act, however, he almost completely
lost his voice! When it came to the duet with _Lucia_ in the first
act, it utterly failed him. The _prima donna_, full of sympathy for
his difficulty, for a time sang his music as well as her own; but
ultimately the curtain had to be rung down, and for a few moments it
appeared as though the performance could not proceed, since--surely
a thing unprecedented at the Paris Opera House--Monsieur Cossira was
not provided with an understudy! As luck would have it, though, among
the audience was M. Engel, who had sung the part with Melba, not long
before, in Brussels. Grasping the situation, he went behind the scenes
and proffered his services, which were gladly and gratefully accepted.
The performance proceeded, and for several nights thereafter M. Engel
sang the part.

"At the close of the evening," added Madame Melba, in telling me of the
incident, "Madame Carnot sent for me. It was during Monsieur Carnot's
reign at the Elysée, and so his wife was occupying the Presidential box
at the Opera. Being a woman of very quick perception, Madame Carnot had
observed my efforts at covering the confusion of my poor colleague. I
can never forget her kind words to me then, nor shall I readily forget
the sorrow I felt afterwards on hearing the news of President Carnot's
terrible end, and of her own death subsequently."

By the time this interview appears in print, Madame Melba will be
in the thick of her fifth visit to the United States. Her previous
operatic tours of the American Continent have been full of varied and
interesting experiences. One of the most characteristic "Melba stories"
that I know dates from her last tour but one. It was at St. Louis,
where, thanks to a late train, the _diva_ and her company arrived
only a very little time before the hour fixed for the commencement.
There was, in fact, only just time for the artists to make for their
respective dressing-rooms. But Melba, looking down from a coign of
vantage into the orchestra, observed, to her dismay and annoyance, that
her musicians were in morning dress. She promptly sent for the _chef
d'orchestre_. The poor man expostulated, remonstrated; they had but a
few minutes before come off the cars; there was no time, etc. But Melba
was firm. "If the gentlemen of my orchestra do not choose to appear in
evening dress, I shall refuse to go on the stage. I owe a duty to the
public as well as to myself."

This inexorable mandate had its effect, and the musicians were soon
seen filing out of the orchestra, to return a few minutes later,
suitably clad in the evening garb of comparative civilization. Then the
curtain rose and the opera commenced--only a very little behind time.
The incident did not, however, pass unrecognised. The critics of the
Press had seen the musicians disappear and re-appear, and correctly
surmising the cause of their "quick change," the result was a series
of graceful little articles in the St. Louis papers complimenting the
popular favourite upon her sense of the fitness of things.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS JULIETTE, 1892. _From a Photo. by
Dupont, Brussels._]

An incident without precedent on the concert stage marked the concert
which Melba gave at the Albert Hall, on November 2nd, to signalize her
departure for her present trans-Atlantic tour. Of the three principal
performers--_i.e._, Madame Melba herself, Miss Ada Crossley, the
contralto, and Mr. Johann Kruse, the solo violinist--all were not only
Australians, but Victorians by birth.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS OPHÉLIE, 1895 _From a Photo. by
Reutlinger, Paris._]

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA, 1893. _From a Photo. by Renque et Cie,
Paris._]

Immediately after her few but brilliant appearances at Covent Garden
last season, Madame Melba rented a charmingly-situated house, called
"Fernley," near the river at Maidenhead. Here she entertained many
friends during the month of August. A very interesting "group"
photograph of three distinguished Australians--Melba, Mr. Haddon
Chambers, and Mr. Bertram MacKennal--taken at that time on the lawn at
Fernley, is shown at the top of this page. It will be interesting to
your readers that the last-named distinguished compatriot of Madame
Melba's is executing a bust of the _diva_, which she has decided to
present to the Public Library of Melbourne. A bust of the Melbourne
Melba, by the Melbourne MacKennal, is obviously an artistic event of
peculiar interest.

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA, MR. HADDON CHAMBERS, AND MR. BERTRAM
MACKENNAL. _From a Photo. by H. Gude, Maidenhead._]

By the way, the popular morning "daily" that unwittingly represented
Melba as an athletic kind of lady, skilled in the gentle art of
rowing, was sadly in error! Far and away the most interesting episode
of the stay at Fernley was a visit which the _prima donna_ and some
members of her house-party paid to the grave of the poet Gray in
Stoke Poges churchyard. Here, it will be remembered, Gray wrote his
beautiful "Elegy"; and here, too, Melba (who, I omitted to say, is an
accomplished organist, and often used to play that instrument in the
Scots Church at Melbourne) expressed a desire to try the organ in the
charming old church of Stoke Poges.

Thereby hangs this tale: The rector, on it being represented to him
that "Madame Melba would like to play the organ," courteously handed
over the necessary keys, and Melba gave great pleasure to her audience
of half-a-dozen friends by playing and singing for them a selection
of pieces, which included the Gounod "Ave Maria," and ended with
the National Anthem. Asked by one of the party how she had enjoyed
the impromptu sacred concert, the old lady who was in charge of the
church, and whose services had been requisitioned to blow the organ,
enthusiastically rejoined, "Oh, it were all beautiful, m'm, but 'God
Save the Queen' were best of all!"

Madame Melba is fortunate in having some one member of her family--a
brother or sister, generally speaking--to accompany her on her
travels. During her last American tour she had for companions both
a sister and a brother--Miss Dora and Mr. Ernest Mitchell--and she
still speaks of the regret with which she parted from them when they
were obliged to return to their Antipodean home about the end of the
last London season. She says she is not less fortunate in having a
man like Mr. Charles A. Ellis (originally the business manager of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra) to personally conduct her trans-Atlantic
tours. The present one will be very much extended, and will involve the
traversing of many thousands of miles by the _diva_ and her company.
The principal members of that company are Ternina, Zélie de Lussan, and
Gadski, Alvarez, Bonnard, Pandolfini, Kraus, and Bonderesque, and the
orchestra is controlled by Signor Seppilli and Mr. Walter Damrosch.
As for Melba's répertoire, it comprises not only two _rôles_ quite
new to her--"Martha" and "La Bohème"--but also "Lucia," "Hamlet,"
"Manon," "Les Huguenots," "La Traviata," "Rigoletto," "Faust," "Roméo
et Juliette," and "Il Barbière di Siviglia"--in the last-named of which
she scored such a shining success at Covent Garden last season. While
on the subject of America, I may mention that Madame Melba seriously
meditates refusing an offer for a season in South America, which I take
to be the most dazzling and tempting ever made to a _prima donna_. She
whimsically says that she thinks she would rather spend the greater
part of 1899 in Europe, although she looks forward with pleasure to a
visit to South America later on.

I am reminded of one more "Melba anecdote." Two or three years ago she
took a party of friends to see the interior of La Scala, the noble
opera-house where many of her triumphs have been won. Throwing open
the door of a dressing-room, their cicerone exclaimed, "This is where
the celebrated Melba used to dress!" The great singer's friends began
to laugh, but she, looking hard at the man, quietly asked him, "What!
don't you know me?" And then this son of Italy perceived that, _sans_
voice and _sans_ diamonds though she might be, she still was "Melba."

It is, I think, illustrative of Madame Melba's large humanity that the
simpler and more sympathetic the anecdote, the better is she pleased to
tell it. For example, "one touch of nature" is to her much more than
to tell of her many meetings with Royalty--of her brilliant career as
queen of opera--of her impressions of the many great ones of the world
into whose society she has been thrown. Of her _début_ in opera she
readily speaks, for must it not always rank as one of her pleasantest
memories? It occurred at the Brussels Opera House, and at the age of
twenty-two. Not at that time knowing French, Melba was permitted to
sing in Italian, while the other artists sang French--an unprecedented
concession to a _débutante_ on the part of the local opera authorities.
On that memorable evening, the next box to the one occupied by some
friends and relatives of Madame Melba contained a lady and gentleman.
At the close of the first act, the latter asked his companion as to
her opinion of the _débutante_, when the lady was heard to reply,
"_Débutante!_ Nonsense! I heard her in Madrid ten years ago. She was an
awful failure, and _she's forty if she's a day_!"

"Did you feel any resentment when you heard the story?" I asked.

"Not in the least," replied Madame Melba, laughing merrily, "albeit in
those early days I had not grown accustomed, as, alas! I have since,
to hearing strangely false reports about myself--reports sometimes
amazing, sometimes absurd, and sometimes, I fear, malicious. Besides, I
was in far too good a humour with the public success I had achieved to
feel angry; and if the story appears in your article, and the lady sees
it, I shall feel amply avenged."

Two incidents in connection with her first American tour were related
to me so feelingly by the _prima donna_, that I must do my best
to reproduce them. The first occurred in New York. Melba had been
practising her part at her hotel one afternoon. Just as she had
finished, and was coming out of her rooms, she encountered a strange
lady, whose rooms opened into the same corridor. The unknown approached
her, and said, "Madame, I think you would be touched to hear what my
little boy said just now. He is lying in bed getting over an illness;
and when you began to sing he lifted his tiny forefinger and whispered,
'Hist, mummy! Birdie!'"

[Illustration: MADAME MELBA (PRESENT DAY). _From a Photo. by
Reutlinger, Paris._]

The second incident referred to occurred one snowy night as the _diva_
was leaving the stage-door of the Opera House at Philadelphia. An old
lady, very neatly attired, but evidently not in affluent circumstances,
was waiting for her as she crossed the foot-way to her carriage. When
Madame Melba appeared the old lady remarked, "Madame, I have just
heard you sing, and I've waited here in the hope that you will let me
take your hand." Melba, deeply touched, impulsively kissed the old
lady on either cheek. This salutation won from its recipient these
simple words, which Melba says she will never forget, "God bless your
beautiful heart, my dear!"

My interesting visit to Madame Melba terminated with, on my
part, a very natural regret. I carried away with me an indelible
impression--the impression of a queenly woman, an incomparable
artist, bearing her unrivalled gifts and her regal position in the
world of music with a simplicity and a womanly modesty which, while
unable to enhance their value, add a singular grace and charm to
their possession. And I found it a pleasing reflection that I had
been accorded an audience of a queen who is delightfully unconscious
of her sovereignty, and who, even if robbed of the gifts which now
enchant the world, would still retain those qualities which enchant her
friends--her bright intelligence, her ever-ready sympathies, and her
true womanliness.

[Illustration:




His Home Coming

BY E. M. JAMESON.]


"Another present, Honor? I thought you had really received the last."

"So did I," replied Honor, sitting up in her low chair, and beginning
to untie the string that was round the small parcel. "People are very
kind; wonderfully kind."

Mrs. Latimer looked up quickly at the sound of the dejected voice.
She was a slight, sweet-looking woman, in widow's dress, whose face,
despite its never-varying sadness, bore traces of great beauty. The
present proved to be a very beautiful pendant of emeralds and diamonds.
Mrs. Latimer, having admired it as it lay on its satin bed, handed it
back to her daughter.

"So kind of your Uncle James," she said, as she did so, watching
meantime, with puzzled uneasiness, Honor's listless fingering of the
jewel-case.

"Very kind!" remarked the girl, tilting her chin somewhat
superciliously. "Am I not marrying a rich man? If Ronald had been poor,
how would Uncle James have treated me?"

"Honor, Honor," said her mother, a pained look crossing her face, "how
very unlike you to be so bitter."

Honor crossed over to where her mother sat and dropped down on the rug
beside her, and taking one of her mother's hands pressed it to her
cheek.

"He thinks it really, little mother, only you are too good to see it,
and know too that I love Ronald so dearly that I'd marry him if he
hadn't a second coat to put on. Uncle James, of all people!"--she threw
the case into the chair she had just vacated, her blue eyes shining and
hard--"Uncle James, who might have done so much, who might have saved
his nephew from destruction by holding out a helping hand. Poor Jim!"

Her clear voice broke for a moment, then she pointed to a table in the
corner that was covered with wedding presents.

"I'd give them all for one little note from Jim saying he was sorry and
was coming to us. Just imagine if he came home and sat with us here in
this very room! I cannot get him out of my thoughts to-night. Perhaps,
somewhere, he is thinking of us."

Mrs. Latimer sank back in her chair, the tears coursing down her face.

"I pray night and morning that he may come back to us, and it seems
as though God turned a deaf ear to all my pleadings. I dream of him,
Honor, so often, our handsome boy, as he was before he went astray, and
the awakening seems more than I can bear."

A pang shot through Honor's heart as she looked up into the fragile
face, and she regretted having been carried away to speak of the
prodigal.

"He will come back to us sooner or later," she said, hastily; "I am
certain of it. He is too fond of us to go far astray. The threats Uncle
James used terrified him."

"I am almost sorry we left the other house," Mrs. Latimer said,
presently. "Suppose he came and found strangers occupying our place?"

"He has only to ask in the neighbourhood to find us no farther than the
next road," said Honor. "Don't let that worry you. He will come home to
us some day."

She spoke with a cheerfulness she was far from experiencing; the
thought had often occurred to her that Jim, her only brother, must be
dead. Heedless and headstrong he might be, but he had always possessed
a warm heart, and would not have left them to anxiety for so long.
Twice her wedding had been postponed, but the prodigal still delayed,
and in a few days her marriage would be an accomplished fact.

Presently Mrs. Latimer said "good-night" and went to bed. After
lighting her candle and watching her up the staircase, Honor returned
to the room in which they had spent the evening. An unbearable
restlessness was upon her, and she could settle to nothing, though
there were notes to be written and a host of other things to be done.

She heard the servants troop up to bed, and then a silence fell upon
the house, only broken by the melancholy soughing of the wind among
the trees in the garden. The loneliness and silence told after a time,
and she rose to follow her mother's example, though sleep was the
farthest thing from her thoughts. She examined the window fastenings,
and picking up the case containing the pendant, placed it among the
presents on the table. The thought occurred to her that there ought to
be a place in which to lock up the valuables, but in her preoccupation
the fact troubled her little. Jim was the one absorbing thought,
ousting even Ronald from her mind. A mental picture of Jim, destitute
and starving, rose before her continually, embittering her life, and
she could look forward to nothing until she was at rest about him.

She looked in at her mother on the way to her own room, and found her
sleeping tranquilly. At the sight of the thin cheek on the pillow,
Honor's heart contracted painfully; her mother grew paler and more
fragile day by day, and the doctors had said that in the weak state of
her heart a sudden shock might prove fatal. A tear dropped on the thin
hand lying outside the counterpane, and Honor crept away to her own
room. When ready for bed she lay in the darkness, feeling every nerve
acutely on the alert.

The clock in the hall below ticked solemnly and struck the hour from
time to time, and Honor could hear the faint sound of the cuckoo. She
remembered the little bird as long as she could remember anything; from
babyhood it had been the delight of herself and Jim, with its perky,
impertinent manner, and the brisk way in which it bounced out and in
again. Hot tears blinded Honor's eyes and soaked into her pillow.

[Illustration: "SHE LOOKED INTO THE WIDE HALL BELOW."]

There came a faint sound from below, so faint as only to make the
stillness more noticeable. The wind moaned round the house, but
fitfully, as if a storm were gathering at a distance. Honor half sat
up in bed, straining her ear to listen. There was not a stir in the
house, yet she felt convinced that someone shared her vigil. Fearing
her mother might be ill, and yet not wishing to disturb her if she
slept, she drew herself noiselessly out of bed, and groped for her
dressing-gown without striking a light. On her way she looked into
the wide hall below. A faint glimmer illumined it, and her eyes soon
became accustomed to the dim light. Someone stood facing the clock.
Click! the doors flew open, and out sprang the cuckoo.

One, two, three. The doors closed again. There was a faint sound,
which might have been a box of matches falling on the tiled floor. It
was followed by a smothered exclamation. The figure stole away in the
direction of the morning-room, where she and her mother had lately been
sitting. Honor remained in the dark motionless, wondering what she
had better do. All the servants were women, and to awaken them meant
rousing her mother, and that she dare not do.

She gathered her dressing-gown closely round her and crept noiselessly
from stair to stair, quivering all over as they creaked under her bare
feet, but never pausing until she stood at the half-open door of the
morning-room and looked in. What she saw froze her into immovability. A
film swam before her eyes. It was Jim! The prodigal had returned, but
why in this way? What could it mean? She rubbed her eyes incredulously.
There was another man standing near the window, but it was upon Jim her
glance was fixed with reluctant, fascinated horror.

[Illustration: "THE LIGHT FELL FULL UPON HER."]

Jim leaned against the mantelpiece, his face was white and drawn, and
in his eyes was reproduced some of the incredulity of Honor's.

"I can't, I tell you," he spoke in a low voice, that yet came clearly
to the listener. "I promised, as it was to be the last time, but I
break my word--I must get out of this, I tell you. That clock! My God!
what I'd give not to feel such a scoundrel!"

"_Clock?_ What are you raving about?" said the other. "What's wrong
with the clock? They must strike, I suppose! Come on, let's get out of
this. What's given you such a scare? You might have seen a ghost."

"So I have, the place is full of them. I must go; the very air stifles
me." He stood upright and moved towards the door.

"Not a foot until you've done your share," replied the other,
advancing, and Honor could see his evil, dissipated face; "don't desert
an old chum."

"I wish to Heaven I had years ago, Hammersley. You've been my curse
ever since I've known you. Let's clear out."

Honor started at the name, that of an old school-fellow. She pushed the
door open farther, and the light fell full upon her, disclosing her
white face with its glittering aureole of hair, and the blue eyes wide
with pain.

Hammersley dropped the trinket he held with a little sharp tinkle, and
drew back into the shade shamefacedly. But Honor never noticed him, all
her glance was for Jim, who stood rigidly upright, staring at her as if
she were a visitant from the grave.

"Honor!" the words came with difficulty from his parched throat.
"_You!_ What does it mean?"

Honor advanced a step nearer.

"_Mean?_" She spoke in a clear, relentless voice, half mad with the
disgrace of it all. "Mean? It means that you have sunk so low as to
rob your mother and sister of a few valuables. It means that you have
broken into your mother's house like a common thief. No, no----" Her
voice vibrated with a sharp throb of pain--"even the lowest, the most
degraded, would think twice before robbing his own."

The light showed clearly all the misery of Jim's handsome, haggard
young face.

"I swear to you----" he began, but Honor went on speaking, her voice
low with concentrated scorn, and he drew back under the lash of her
glance.

"Why did you not die years ago? Only to-night we were talking of you,
praying that you might return, and _this_ is how God answers our
prayers!"

She pointed to the table, and Jim's head sank lower.

"Take them all if you want them, but go."

He moved blindly towards the door, and as he reached it, a footstep
sounded along the passage, and Mrs. Latimer appeared. Before Honor
could stir she had caught sight of Jim, and putting down the light she
carried, she made a little run forward, and put her arms round his neck.

"God bless you, my own boy. I knew you would come," she said, and fell
inertly with her cheek against his.

Above his mother's head, Jim's eyes met those of Honor, in anguished
appeal. As he stood holding his mother in his arms his punishment
seemed greater than he could bear.

A fresh fear took possession of Honor, and for a moment she dared not
ascertain the worst. Had not the doctors talked of a sudden shock?

"Bring her here," she said, indicating a couch close by; "she must
never know, poor, poor mother!"

In the bustle that ensued Hammersley made good his escape, unnoticed by
anyone. Honor applied restoratives, and after a long time Mrs. Latimer
came back to consciousness. Her glance sought for Jim; Honor motioned
him over.

"My own darling boy, why did you come back so late? How thin and white
you are! We must feed him well, must we not, Honor?"

[Illustration: "SHE PUT HER ARMS ROUND HIS NECK."]

She stroked his face as he bent over her, and under her loving trust
and entire unconsciousness of the true facts of the case Jim suddenly
broke down, and, like a penitent child, buried his face in a fold of
her dressing-gown. And she never knew the truth. But even Honor, who
knows, has perfect faith now in Jim.




_In Nature's Workshop._

BY GRANT ALLEN.


I.--SEXTONS AND SCAVENGERS.

In a certain sense, all animated nature is but a single vast
co-operative society. I am no foolish optimist: I will admit, indeed,
that the members of the society so composed often display to one
another the most unfriendly and unfraternal spirit. The hawks, for
instance, show a distinct want of true brotherly love towards the
larks or the tom-tits: and the mice and lizards find the owls and the
cats by no means clubbable. The co-operative society is hardly what
one could call a happy family. Still, in spite of the fact insisted
upon by the poet that "Nature is one with rapine--a harm no preacher
can heal," it is none the less true that a certain rough balance, an
accommodation or adjustment of part to part, occurs in every department
of animal and vegetable life. When we come to think, it could hardly
be otherwise. Things can only exist if they contain in themselves
the conditions necessary to existence. An unadapted animal or plant
perishes instantly. Spiders could not live in an island which contained
no flies; kingfishers necessarily presuppose fish; and silkworms imply
the presence of mulberry leaves. You cannot have vultures wild in a
country where there are no dead animals lying about loose: nor can you
keep bees except where there are honey-bearing flowers. Dutch clover
depends for its very existence upon a few insects which fertilize it
and set its seeds. The draining of the fens killed out a dozen species
of English plants and animals; the inclosure of the prairies deprived
the buffaloes of their chance of pasture. In this sense, all nature
hangs together as it were; each species fills some place in the great
mosaic which cannot be altered without considerable disturbance of
adjacent pieces. Destroy the rabbits in a given area, and you have
nothing left for the weasels to feed upon.

Sometimes, too, apparently unimportant or unnoticed creatures perform
in the aggregate some valuable work for the rest of the plant and
animal community, which little suspects its real indebtedness to them.
Darwin showed long ago that the humble and despised earthworm was
really answerable for the greater part of that rich layer of vegetable
mould or soil which covers the bare rocks; it deposits the material in
which all our plants root and from which they derive a large element
of their sustenance. Kill out the earthworms over the whole of our
earth, and you would reduce a vast proportion of it to the condition of
a desert. For the worms pull down green leaves into their neat little
burrows; and the refuse of these leaves, continually renewed from
season to season by the industrious small workmen, forms by far the
greater share of that dark layer of vegetable mould which is the chief
source of the fertility in plains and lowlands. Sandy upland spots,
where worms are few, form little or no soil, and will only support a
poor moorland growth of gorse and heather. You must have plenty of
worms if you want to grow corn or turnips.

But there are other unconsidered creatures besides these, creatures
which perform for us functions almost as useful and important as those
of the earthworms; and I propose to devote a few pages here to one
such group, the sanitary commissioners of the insect world, as I will
venture to call them--the vast body of minor sextons and six-legged
scavengers. Has it ever struck you that as you walk abroad through
the rich green meadows and pastures of England, you almost never come
across a dead and decaying animal? I do not mean large animals like
horses and donkeys: those do sometimes occur unburied, giving us bold
and unpleasant advertisement of their near presence. But just consider
that the fields through which you stroll are a perfect warren of moles
and shrews and field-mice and water-voles and frogs and lizards and
rabbits and weasels, to say nothing of smaller fry; and then think how
seldom on your morning rounds in the country you come across a single
dead bird or rat or adder, a departed toad, or a late lamented leveret.
The ground about you teems with life: but where are its cemeteries?
Squirrels and dormice are dying in every copse: but what becomes of
their bodies? Who ever saw a dead bat? Who knows the tomb of the
deceased hedgehogs?

Of course a great many of the smaller animals die a violent death, and
find their living grave in the maw of their devourers--one must admit
that explanation as covering a very large number of cases. Thirty
field-mice have been disinterred from the stomach of a single buzzard
when it was shot in the act of digesting after a good dinner; and owls
and snakes are answerable for the fate of no small proportion of our
minuter wild animals. In other countries, too, vultures and jackals
devour most of the carrion as it lies; while even in England we have
a few dead-meat-eaters, such as the carrion-crow, the rat, and the
shrike. But for the most part our rural English public scavengers are
smaller and less conspicuous creatures. Foremost among them in number
and utility we may reckon the various kinds of burying beetle.

If you _do_ find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied in
England, it occurs almost always on a path or high-road. Now this fact
is in itself significant; for the high-road is practically a man-made
desert, so hardened and steam-rollered, so pounded and wheel-ridden,
that no plant can grow on it; so exposed that small animals will only
scurry across it for dear life in fear and trembling; and so difficult
to dig into that no burrowing creature can hope to worm his toilsome
way through it. Hence the animals that die on the road are almost
never buried; while those that die in the field or copse are either
eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few
hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed,
a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small
long-nosed, insect-eating animals known as shrews cannot so much as
cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed
to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way: shrews
die of cold and hunger in great numbers at the approach of winter.
A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these,
however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities, the sexton
beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path;
these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the
hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry them off
to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road,
and none on the open ground: so he hastily concludes in his easy-going
way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are
always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals.
If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke is specially certain: for
the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity.

I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform
their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of
reward. Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious
calling for the sake of gain: they expect to be paid for their sanitary
services. The payment is taken in two forms: one, immediate, as food
for themselves: the other, deferred, as board and lodging for their
children.

[Illustration: 1.--GROUPS OF MISCELLANEOUS SEXTON BEETLES, DISCOVERING
A DEAD FIELD-MOUSE.]

Our illustration No. 1 introduces us to a typical miscellaneous group
of these insect scavengers, occupied in appropriating a very fine and
desirable carcass on which they have just lighted. A field-mouse,
vanquished by fate in the struggle for existence, has lately "turned up
his toes" in the most literal sense, and lies unburied, like Archytas,
on the loose sand of a bare patch in a meadow. All carrion-eating
creatures are remarkable for their powerful sense of smell: and the
sexton beetles, like the vultures and condors, are no exception to
the rule. They sniff their prey from afar: for where the carcass is,
there shall the carrion beetles be gathered together. All are eager to
take their share of the feast, and still more to lay their eggs in the
dead body. Some of them may crawl up from the immediate neighbourhood;
others, summoned from afar, come flying on their gauze-like wings from
considerable distances. They are, as a rule, nocturnal creatures, and
they come out on their burying expeditions by night alone.

The insect just alighting from his flight, in the upper part of the
illustration, is _the_ burying beetle _par excellence_ among our
British kinds; he rejoices (we are always supposed to rejoice foolishly
in our personal designations) in the dignified title of _Necrophorus
vespillo_. In stature he measures about an inch long, and he is a
handsome beast, with two bright orange bands on his hard wing-covers.
The illustration shows these wing-covers raised, as is the habit of
beetles when they fly, while the thin but powerful wings beneath
them are expanded as true pinions. When the insect alights, he folds
the wings up carefully and replaces them under the hard protective
wing-covers: he is then securely armour-plated from head to foot, and
need fear no foe, save birds which swallow him whole--a very tough
morsel--and hedgehogs which crunch him in their strong jaws before
eating him. However, he is well prepared for all such enemies, for he
can exude when attacked a very nasty fluid with a disgusting smell:
and this mode of defence, which resembles that of the skunk and the
polecat, usually protects him from obtrusive inquirers. He must be
handled with caution, as the perfume he diffuses spoils woollen clothes
and clings to the fingers after two or three washings.

[Illustration: 2.--THE SEXTONS AT WORK: BURYING THE BODY.]

As a rule, when a carcass appears, a pair of burying beetles of the
same species--a husband and wife--fly up to the scene of operations
together and take possession of the prey; though in the illustration
Mr. Enock has represented several kinds engaged at once in staking
out claims, which indeed happens often enough in nature. But if you
count the number on any one dead bird or animal, you will almost
always find they are even in number--in other words, so many pairs,
male and female. No. 2 shows us the next act in the funeral drama. The
male beetles, after satisfying their own immediate hunger, proceed to
bury the carcass in a very curious and laborious manner. You would
wonder how so small a creature could produce so great a result: the
fact is, the beetles attain their end by continuous under-cutting. The
female hides herself in the body: the male buries her alive and the
dead creature with her. He first drags the mouse, frog, or bird to a
suitable spot where the soil is soft enough to admit of excavation;
and sometimes three or four males have to combine for this purpose.
They then proceed to dig with their heads, which are tools specialized
for the purpose, and provided with strong and powerful muscles. The
antennæ have also assumed for this object a short club-shaped type,
very suitable for a navvy's mattock. The little engineers begin by
excavating a furrow all round the body, and then a second inside that
again, throwing the earth out of each into the previous one: and so
on till the carcass begins to sink into the hollow. They then dig and
tunnel beneath it, carrying out loads of earth, one after another, till
bit by bit the carcass collapses into the hole, first in front, then
behind, and has reached a level considerably below the surface. Then
they throw in the earth they have excavated, and cover up the body with
the females inside it; after which, I regret to say, they proceed
to hold a very cannibalistic funeral service above it. The funeral
service consists in eating as much of the body as they desire for their
own purposes: when they have satisfied their appetite, they begin to
think of the interests of posterity. The mother beetle proceeds to lay
her tale of eggs in the decently-buried body, for every animal knows
by instinct the precise place in which to deposit its young and the
precise food which happens to suit them.

After the eggs are laid, the two parent beetles crawl out of the hole
and cover it carefully up so as to conceal the hiding-place. So far
as they themselves are concerned, their only object in all this is
to procure food for themselves and their infant young. But the wider
effects of such scavenger insects go very far. For we now know that
there is no disinfectant so good as the top layer of the soil, which is
not really mere dead earth (as most people imagine), but a mingled mass
of ramifying life--a little foundation of clay and sand intermixed with
endless minute organisms, both animal and vegetable--fungi, bacteria,
mites, weevils, and all sorts of petty creatures, which eat up and
destroy harmlessly all dead matter subjected to their influence. The
earth is thus a most admirable deodorizer and purifier: and burial in
its top layers, the body being freely exposed to the rapid action of
the devouring microbes, is a most sanitary mode of disposing of refuse.
Thus the part that is played in the East by vultures and jackals,
or by the wild dogs of Constantinople, is far more effectually and
unobtrusively played in our fields and meadows by the many kinds of
burying beetles and other insect scavengers. If we remember how great a
nuisance a single dead rat becomes in a house, we can faintly picture
to ourselves the debt we owe to these excellent and unnoticed little
sanitary commissioners. Without them, our fields would not smell so
fresh, nor would our flowers bloom so bright; for we must remember that
by burying the dead beasts they are not only preventing disease but
also manuring the pastures in the best possible fashion. The bones of
small animals decay rapidly and make excellent material for the growth
of vegetation. The beetles as a rule hunt by night only, and find their
prey, as vultures do, by the sense of smell. When they first find it,
the male hovers above it like an eagle, circling round and round, so
as to point it out to his mate; the female flies straight to it, and
buries herself without delay in the rich banquet.

But what becomes at last of the buried bodies? No. 3 will show you.
The female beetle lays in each body about as many eggs as she thinks
it will support. In a very short time the eggs hatch out, and the
grubs begin to devour the abundant feast provided for them. The two
grubs to the right in the illustration are the young of our friend the
orange-banded burying beetle: the one to the left is a larva of an
allied form known by the poetical name of Silpha. They set to work at
once on the remains of the mouse, and thoroughly strip the bones of
every fibre of flesh. As soon as the skeleton is bare, they consider
it time to leave off feeding, and pass on to the second stage of their
existence--the pupa, or mummy-case.

[Illustration: 3.--THE GRUBS UNDERGROUND; FEEDING UPON THE BODY.]

As larvæ, the young burying beetles look like worms, and have six
short legs. No. 4 shows them in the intermediate stage, when they
have retired into a clay cell, or cocoon, and are undergoing their
transformation into the perfect insect. We are here supposed to have
removed the soil on one side so as to give a view into the concreted
earthen chambers where the pupæ are changing into full-grown beetles.
You can see the much longer legs of the adult insect beginning to
develop, while the head assumes slowly its later form. The grubs remain
in the cocoon through the winter, and emerge in spring as winged
beetles, when they fly away with their brilliant wing-cases raised, in
search of congenial mates and more dead field-mice. The best places
to look for all these beetles are the "keeper's trees," on which
game-keepers hang up the jays and weasels they shoot, to encourage the
others. If you tap one such dead weasel you will generally find it is
simply swarming with insect life.

[Illustration: 4.--NO MORE LEFT! THE GRUBS IN THEIR COCOONS TURNING
INTO BEETLES.]

Yet, strange to say, even the insect undertakers themselves are not
without their ideas of beauty and their musical perceptions. The orange
bands of our commonest English kind have been developed as attractions
for their admiring mates; and the male beetles have also a musical
instrument of their own in the shape of a peculiar rasp-like ring on
the body, which they can rub against the wing-cases, and so produce a
much-appreciated chirping. Such instrumental music is always employed,
like the song of birds, as a charm to heighten the attractiveness of
the suitor: and male burying beetles may be heard on the evenings of
sunny days competing with one another in musical contests. Indeed,
it often happens that animals which seem to us disgusting or unclean
display among themselves much æsthetic taste, and are gifted with more
sense of beauty or love of music than many other forms where our human
eyes would be more inclined to look for the presence of these higher
endowments.

I may add that if the beetles left the bodies in which they laid their
eggs to lie above ground, the bodies would dry up, and the eggs would
run much greater risks. By burying the dead animal, they provide their
young with food and shelter together, and so display considerable
intelligence.

Another very distinct group of insects which act as scavengers in a
different way in hotter climates than ours are the famous scarabs or
sacred beetles, worshipped almost like gods by the ancient Egyptians.
English people know the scarabs best, I think, in the neighbourhood of
Naples, or on the Lido at Venice--that great bank of sand and shingle
which separates the lagoons from the open Adriatic. When wearied with
sight-seeing at St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace, we have, most of us,
taken the little steamer that runs across to the baths on the Lido, and
spent a pleasant hour or two in picking up shells and dried sea-horses
on the firm belt of beach that stretches away to Malamocco. A little
inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind,
and over-grown by patches of blue-green marram-grass and other sandy
seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills, choosing a
spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours, you will soon be amused by
seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in every
direction. A number of odd-looking beetles, with long hind legs and
very quaint heads, are occupied with ceaseless industry in rolling a
lot of dark, round balls almost as big as themselves along the slopes
of the sand-hills. In many places, the whole ground is alive with the
tugging and pushing little beasts: indeed, when you come to look close
you will find that every half acre of sand on the Venetian shore or
the lower edge of the Egyptian desert is a perfect city of these busy
wee creatures. Earth is honeycombed with their holes, towards which
innumerable beetles are continually rolling their mysterious balls at
every possible angle.

Now, what are the balls composed of? There comes the oddest part of
the whole odd proceeding. The plain truth of it is that the sacred
beetles are assistant scavengers--imperfect Southern and Oriental
substitutes for a main drainage system. The balls consist of dung,
dirt, and refuse, and the beetles collect them on the open, dry them
hard in the sun, roll them to the mouths of their burrows, and then
live on them till the ball has all been eaten. It is the funniest thing
in the world to watch them. They tumble about in the loose sand and
stumble over little eminences in the most comical fashion. No. 5 shows
a pair of scarabs engaged in this habitual and quaint amusement. They
have each collected a round mass of manure, and rolled and dried it
nicely into shape; they are now engaged in trundling their booty off at
their leisure to a place of safety. But they are obliged to push the
balls backward with their long hind legs: and as this precludes the
possibility of the scarab seeing where it is going, each beetle pauses
every now and again and turns round, like a man sculling in a boat
alone, to look what is ahead of him. Sometimes in doing so he loses his
ball, a misfortune which has just happened to the beetle on the right
in No. 5. The precious pellet goes bounding off down hill as fast as
gravitation will take it. In this case, the disappointed little workman
faces round and darts after it at full speed, going forward now instead
of backward, and trying to head the ball as it rolls down the uncertain
slope of the sand-hills. If he succeeds, he puts himself in front of
the ball as it falls, catches it with his hind legs, and begins once
more laboriously to push it backward up hill again, towards the mouth
of his hole. But as the pellets roll quickly, and the beetles are by no
means rapid runners, he seldom succeeds in recovering his own property,
unless the ball happens to catch for a moment on some projecting little
hillock of sand, or be checked on its downward course by a weed, a
stick, or a dead shell or starfish.

[Illustration: 5.--SACRED SCARABS ROLLING THEIR FOOD-BALLS BACKWARD
(THE INSECT TO THE RIGHT HAS LOST HIS DINNER).]

On the other hand, the scarabs, I fear I must admit, are terrible
thieves; and if one scarab has lost his own ball, and sees some
companion's pellet come rolling down hill towards him, he will often
give up the pursuit of his lost property, and quietly and barefacedly
appropriate his neighbour's. I have seen great fights take place at
times over a disputed ball; though sometimes the combatants agree
amicably to roll it along in common, and probably share it when they
have reached their hole. Sometimes, again, three or four will unite to
roll a ball: and then, when one loses it, the others combine to hold it
up or catch it. I have spent hours together both in Egypt and on the
Mediterranean or the Adriatic in watching the queer antics of these
comic little commissioners of drainage: and I never tire of observing
their odd and unexpected combinations of interest. I have sometimes
known the real owner abandon a ball in despair, from the unevenness of
the ground, and then seen a couple of outsiders come up and succeed in
doing what the true owner had been unable to accomplish.

In No. 6 you see two such scarabs whose toil has at last been crowned
by success, and who are delivering their balls with joy into the holes
in the sand which form their residences. As far as I can make out,
a pair of beetles, male and female, seem usually to share a hole in
common, and to roll balls of food to it either alone or in concert.
I cannot say I have ever seen much co-operation except between such
partners. Once a ball is secured and safely landed--for here, as
elsewhere, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip--the happy
couple proceed to eat it up, and apparently do not emerge again from
their burrow till the supply is exhausted. Patient naturalists say
that one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as a fortnight,
but this I do not vouch for of personal knowledge. When more food is
wanted, the couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to
collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll into a new food-ball and
then dry and harden.

[Illustration: 6.--PRIMITIVE GOLF--END OF A ROUND: THE SCARABS HOLING
THEIR BALLS.]

Till very lately, it was universally believed that the female scarab
laid an egg in some of the balls, and that the young grubs hatched
within such food-stocks and began at once to devour them. This belief
has recently been contradicted with great emphasis by a good French
observer, who opened many balls and found no eggs; but I cannot accept
his conclusion. I opened numbers of balls myself near Venice this
year, and saw in several one or two eggs, while in one case (unearthed
from a hole) I discovered a half-grown larva. I venture therefore in
this matter to believe my own eyes as against those of even the most
celebrated and authoritative entomologists.

In Egypt, it has been universally believed from all antiquity--and
I think quite rightly--that after the scarab has laid an egg in the
ball, the parents unite in rolling it to a place of safety, above the
level of the annual inundation due to the rise of the Nile. At any
rate, scarabs abound in Egypt. At a very early date, it would seem, the
curious action of these beetles attracted the attention of the ancient
Egyptians, whose worship of animals was one of the most marked features
in their monstrous religion. Hence grew a strange and widespread
superstition. A race which deified the hawk, the cat, the ibis, and
the jackal was not likely to overlook the marvellous proceedings of
the pious and dutiful scarab. So the very early Egyptians, we may
conjecture, began by thinking there must be something divine in the
nature of an insect which worked so ceaselessly on behalf of its young,
and rolled such big round balls behind it up such relatively large
hillocks. Watching a little closer, as time went on, the Egyptian
discovered, no doubt, that sacred beetles did not proceed directly from
sacred beetles, like lambs from ewes, but grew, as it were, out of
the dirt and corruption of the mysterious pellets. A modern observer
would, of course, at once suspect that the scarab laid an egg inside
the ball, and would promptly proceed to pull one open and look for
it. But that cold scientific method was not likely to commend itself
to the mystic and deeply religious Egyptian mind. The priests by the
Nile jumped rather to the conclusion that the scarab collected dirt
in order to make a future scarab out of clay, and that from this dirt
the young beetle grew, self-existent, self-developed, self-created.
Considering the absence of scientific knowledge and comparative groups
of scientific facts at the time, such a conclusion was by no means
unnatural.

Once started on so strange a set of ideas, the Egyptians proceeded
to evolve a worship of the scarab which grew ever and developed, as
they thought the scarab itself did, practically out of nothing. The
immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were the
central ideas of Egyptian religion; the thinkers of Thebes and Memphis
instantly perceived a fanciful analogy between the scarab rising
from its bed of dirt and the mummy reviving when the expected day of
resurrection should at last arrive. As a consequence of this analogy,
the scarab was made sacred: it was reverenced during its life and
often preserved after its death, like the mummied cats and hawks and
sacred Apis bulls which formed such special objects of veneration to
the devout of Egypt. All sorts of mystic relations were also discovered
before long in the scarab: its "toes" were counted as thirty, and
held to symbolize the days of the month: it was said to be male only,
without a female, and so to typify the creative power and the paternal
or masculine principle in nature. Sun-worship, as we know, formed a
large part of the later (though not of the most primitive) Egyptian
religion: and the ball rolled by the scarab was therefore supposed to
personify Ra, the great sun-god. In one way or another, the sanctity
and the mystic implications of the scarab grew and grew, age after age,
until at last scarab-worship became one of the chief practical elements
in the religion of Egypt. There was a scarab-headed god, and scarab
hieroglyphs appear on the face of all the monuments.

It is as a charm or amulet, however, that the ancient Egyptian
imitation scarab is best known. From a very early period in the history
of the Nile valley it became usual for luck's sake to bury some of
these sacred beetles with the mummy, perhaps alive (in which case most
of them would no doubt creep out again) and perhaps also dead. A few
real scarabs have thus been found here and there in tombs. But for
the most part, just as the Egyptians buried little porcelain images
to accompany the mummy, so they buried porcelain or stone scarabs;
and these were rather closely imitated from the living insect, but
made still more sacred by being enamelled or engraved with the holy
name of some king or god. Scarabs of this kind, inscribed with sacred
words, and regarded as talismans, form some of the commonest objects
disinterred in all the Egyptian excavations: one of them, from a
specimen in the British Museum, is illustrated in No. 7. Comparison
with the live beetles in the other engravings will show how well the
Egyptians copied nature in this instance.

[Illustration: 7.--AN EGYPTIAN SACRED SCARAB, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

These beautiful and often costly Egyptian scarabs have been made the
subject of very exhaustive study by various writers, more particularly
by Mr. Loftie and Mr. Flinders Petrie. The Egyptians did not coin
money, so that scarabs bearing the names of kings came to have somewhat
the same importance for Egyptian history as coins have for the history
of later civilized nations. Mr. Loftie traces the origin of the
inscribed scarabs to a very early epoch in the Egyptian annals. "From
the earliest times until the end of the native monarchy," he says,
"certain usages continued unchanged. Among them was the inscription
of names and texts on scarabs. The beetle which rolls before it"--he
ought rather to have said behind it--"a ball of mud in which its
egg is concealed was, at some period so remote that we cannot even
approximately date it, seized upon as the embodiment of the idea of
futurity.... The scarab, burying his egg, became the symbol of the
resurrection, of the happy time to come, of a re-creation of all
things; and with every corpse scarabs were buried, and scarabs were
sewed upon the shroud, and strung into a network to cover the body,
and suspended round the neck, and clasped in the dead hands. As many
as three thousand scarabs have been found in one tomb, and the number
in existence in museums and private collections is past count." Some
of these imitation beetles are of blue pottery, enamelled outside;
but others are of lapis lazuli, jade, carnelian, and many other
precious stones. Sacred in themselves by their very form, that of
the revered insect god, they are rendered still more sacred by their
mystic inscriptions, which consist of appropriate religious phrases in
hieroglyphic writing.

From Egypt, the belief in the luck and value of engraved scarabs as
charms or amulets passed on to the Greeks, and also to the Etruscans.
Many Greek scarabs have been found; and in the old Etruscan tombs such
lucky beasts are comparatively common. They are mostly made more or
less in imitation of the Egyptian originals. Oddly enough, even the
early Christians themselves did not at once get over the belief in the
sanctity and talismanic character of the sacred beetle, for the Rev.
W. J. Loftie has pointed out examples of late scarabs engraved with
undoubted Christian symbols--not only crosses but even crucifixes. In
our own days, a slight revival of the antique superstition has once
more taken place, and some ladies of my acquaintance wear specimens
of the old sacred beetles as charms in brooches or suspended on their
watch-chains.

Though such numbers of true ancient scarabs have been unearthed in
Egypt, still the supply of the genuine article does not quite keep pace
with the increasing demands of the modern tourist: and there is now a
flourishing manufactory of sham antiques at Luxor, where hundreds of
false scarabs with nice imitation hieroglyphic inscriptions are neatly
turned out for the market every season.

About sixty different kinds of live scarabs are known to inhabit the
Mediterranean district in Europe, Asia, or Africa: and four of these
kinds can be easily distinguished as being individually represented in
the old Egyptian gems. We have no true scarab of this class living in
Britain: but there are other scavenger beetles which take their place,
the best known being the common dorbeetle. One of the same family,
but with a quaintly horned head, exists in vast numbers on the Surrey
hills where I have pitched my tent. The English dung-beetle burrows in
the soft sandstone, and throws up neat little heaps of clean sand at
the mouth of its hole, like miniature molehills. Still, our English
scavenger beetles--known to science as Geotrupes--are not nearly so
clever or so interesting as the southern type, for the female in our
sort merely grubs a straight tunnel in the ground, and lays her egg
in a loose mass of dung, which she drags to the bottom in a shapeless
condition. This beetle utters a plaintive buzzing cry when it is
chasing its mate--a soft of "last appeal" which seems calculated to
soften the heart of the hardest lady beetle. It is as cunning in its
way as most others of its race, for if you catch it in your hand, it at
once draws in its legs to its side and "shams dead." All the English
and foreign scavenger beetles perform a useful task by following up
animals and clearing away their refuse; indeed, a special kind of
beetle lays itself out as scavenger for each species of large animal,
one kind being attached to the cow, one to the donkey, one to the
camel, and so on through a long list of patrons and satellites.

You will thus see that in this wider sense all creation moved together
like a vast joint-stock co-operative society, each kind working
consciously for its own good alone, but each also in a certain deeper
and unconscious way contributing to the general well-being of all, by
its exercise of some special function. Nevertheless, the function is
always performed by each plant or animal itself for its own purposes;
it only incidentally serves to benefit the others. Thus the burying
beetles and the scavenger beetles work first of all and ostensibly
for their own food and the food of their offspring: it is merely as
an incidental result, undesigned by themselves, that they assist in
purifying the air and the soil for all other species. Or, to put it
still more simply, while these industrious little creatures are working
individually for their own ends, they are also in the wider scheme of
nature working unconsciously and almost unwillingly in the service of
others. Nature bribes each kind, as it were, by some personal advantage
to perform good work for the benefit of the totality.

The good work performed by the scavengers may be thus summed up. If
dead bodies and the refuse of food were left about everywhere freely on
the open, germs of disease and putrefaction would fly about much more
commonly than even at present. But a large number of scavenger animals,
scavenger birds, and scavenger insects--hyenas, vultures, burying
beetles, and so forth--act as public servants to prevent this calamity.
Again, the earth needs the bodies and the refuse as fertilizers: and
many of the scavengers carry down such materials into the first layer
of the soil, where they become of enormous use in promoting the freer
growth of vegetation. Thus, long before men learnt to bury their dead
or to manure their fields, nature had invented both these processes,
and registered them, so to speak, in the instincts and habits of a
special class of insect sextons and sanitary inspectors. It is always
so in life. There is hardly a human trade or a human activity which
does not find its counterpart somewhere in animal or vegetable life:
and it will be my object, in future numbers of these papers, to set
before you in other directions some such natural anticipations or
foreshadowings of man's inventions.

[Illustration:




Weepin' Willie

By Albert Trapmann]


I.

Private William Fox was swaggering down the road to Shorncliffe Camp;
that is to say, he was trying to swagger as much as his 5ft. 2in. of
stature would allow. For the prettiest girl in Folkestone was holding
on affectionately to his left arm, and in his right hand he displayed
to full advantage his new silver-topped cane, the result of several
weeks' savings.

"Little Willie," as his comrades of the 210th line called him, was the
most "special" of "special enlistments." He had enlisted at a time
when a war scare was running riot throughout the country, and the
inspector-surgeon had passed him, saying that he was sure to grow to
standard height as he was only just eighteen, although it was evident
to anyone who glanced at the set look of his shoulders that he would
never be a hair's-breadth taller than he was. It was certainly rather
trying to his three-month-old martial dignity to have the street
urchins asking him as he strutted through the town whether "his ma
knew he was out"--but that was nothing to the jeers of the men of his
company, and Little Willie had not found the life of a soldier of the
Queen as alluring as the recruiting sergeant had painted it.

But on this particular summer afternoon he had forgotten all that, for
was not Nellie, his own little Nellie, tripping along by his side?--and
he never thought of his grievances when she smiled those sunny smiles
of hers. He had known her for years; as children they had made mud-pies
in the gutter together, and when he was a little older he used to spend
the pence he got for holding horses and running errands in sweets for
Nellie; and now that they were grown up, and that she was in service
and he was wearing a red coat, they "walked out" together, and talked
of getting married.

"When I get my stripes, Nell, we'll get spliced, thet's what we'll do."

Nell nodded her assent.

"'Ow long'll thet be, Will?"

"Not so very long, neither," he said, his boyish face lighting up with
the ambition of a future field-marshal--"a year or two, maybe, maybe
less--they're a-wanting good, steady men loike me."

Here a loud voice behind them put an end to further confidences. "Ullo,
little 'un, where are yer a-going, so 'aughty-like? Yer won't as much
as look at a pal!"

The two stopped and looked round as Big Bob finished his sentence,
Willie with disgust written on every feature, Nellie with unqualified
admiration in her brown eyes. Big Bob was accustomed to that sort of
thing from the girls he condescended to talk to; he was certainly a
very handsome man--fair, curly hair, a fierce moustache, and light-blue
eyes that looked down protectingly on womankind in general. So without
further ado he ranged up on the other side of Nellie with a "Pleased to
meet yer, miss."

For the rest of that walk poor Little Willie was decidedly "out of it."
He had to dodge lamp-posts and walk on the curb, so that his six-foot
rival should not be forced into the hedge on the other side; however,
there was one consolatory thought in his mind, namely, that if Nellie
managed to impress Big Bob favourably--as he had little doubt she
would--the latter perhaps would give up making Willie's barrack-room
life a burden to him.

Nellie _did_ make a good impression on Big Bob; but, alas, for poor
little Willie, it was not a one-sided affair. Next time the two lovers
went for a stroll, Nell was distinctly patronizing.

"Why don't yer grow, Will? Yer ain't as tall as me by a inch, and yer
does look small in a red coat!"

This was an awful blow; up till now, Nellie had been the only one
person who told him he looked well in his uniform, and now that she
should turn on him like this!

"Garn!" he answered, "where's the use in bein' a lamp-post?"

"But Big Bob--I mean Mr. Jones--'e ain't no lamp-post. 'E's a good
sight broader in the shoulders than ever you'll be. Why, 'e'd make two
of yer, 'e would!"

"Well, 'e don't draw no double pay, no 'ow, and don't yer forget it,
neither!"

After half an hour's walk these amenities produced a decided coolness,
and when Big Bob strolled up and offered them the pleasure of his
company, it was a great relief to both. But Little Willie felt very
miserable indeed when he thought over the day's events, as he lay on
his hard barrack bed that night and courted sleep in vain.

"I'll make it up with her on Sunday," he kept on saying to himself by
way of consolation. But when Sunday came round again, after a long,
weary week of bullying, Nellie was absent from the rendezvous, and he
wandered disconsolately all over Folkestone in the hope of meeting
her. He did meet her--but hanging proudly on the stalwart arm of Bob
Jones! Poor Willie did not even reply to her "Good afternoon," but went
straight back to his cheerless barrack-room and spent the remainder of
the day in putting a vicious polish on his captain's sword and buttons,
by way of relieving his feelings.

Captain Archie Trevor was Little Willie's hero--he worshipped him at a
distance, and proved his devotion by the care he took of that officer's
effects. Captain Trevor's boots were the admiration of the parade,
and even the colonel wondered how they always looked so bright and
spotless. Willie was an ideal soldier's servant, and was quite happy
if he won an occasional word of approbation from his hero; for Willie
had never forgotten how, during his first march-out with the battalion,
when he was staggering along under his heavy rifle, with blistered feet
and aching legs, wondering how long it would be before his knees gave
way altogether, his stalwart captain had come up and cheered him with
a few words, and had carried his rifle for him all the rest of the
long, weary day. "I'd give a month's pay, thet I would, to shake 'ands
with the captain," he had afterwards said to a comrade, in a burst of
confidence; and so it came about that there was never such an ideal
soldier's servant as Little Willie.

That evening A Company had a "smoker" in one of the disused huts of
Shorncliffe Camp. The hut was packed with unbelted warriors, who joined
noisily in the choruses of the popular songs, and passed round buckets
of beer to wet their throats between whiles. Little groups of men
were sitting smoking all over the room, some on biscuit-tins, some on
benches and tables, all chatting and laughing amongst themselves, and
occasionally shouting spicy and personal remarks to the performers, who
used a table as a stage, and were not loth to pause in the middle of a
song and accept a drink from a proffered mug or pail.

One occupant of the room, however, took little interest in the
proceedings. Willie had perched himself in a corner, where he sat
unnoticed; why he had come at all he did not know. Perhaps it was that
anything was preferable to the deserted barrack-room in his present
state of mind. There he sat on an upturned pail, with an untouched mug
of beer beside him, giving no heed to what went on around, dismally
busy with his own thoughts.

"What-ho, Willie," cried Big Bob, as he espied him for the first time.
"What yer so quiet about?"

Willie gave an imperceptible shudder as the bully shouldered his way
through the intervening groups. "'Ere, boys, Little Willie's goin' to
give us a cormic song!"

A roar of applause greeted this announcement, and several of Willie's
particular tormentors closed up around him.

"I carn't sing to-night," protested the victim, feebly.

"More yer can any other time!"

Another round of applause followed this sally.

"Ain't yer going to offer us a tip at yer mug?" Big Bob said, as he
caught up the tankard from the floor.

"In course, if yer ain't wet enough already," answered Willie.

"Mates," said the offended one, pointing dramatically at the youth on
the bucket--"Mates, the nipper's 'inted as 'ow I'm squiffy! Then take
yer bloomin' tipple; Oi'll 'ave none of it!" and he poured the whole
contents of the pot over the luckless young soldier.

Willie rose with an angry flush, but someone from behind caught him by
the ankle and sent him rolling to the floor.

[Illustration: "WEEPIN' WILLIE, TAKE THET."]

"So-o-o, yer wants to fight, does yer?" cried Big Bob, as he jerked the
lad to his feet again. "What proice thet, Sandow!" and he administered
a terrific box on the ear to the half-dazed Willie. It was by no means
the first time that Willie had "gone through the mill," but he was
getting rather sick of the process, and resolved to show fight.

"Yer bloomin' set of bullies!" he blurted out. But just then a leg from
the encircling crowd neatly tripped up our young gallant and deposited
him on the floor again. Once more he struggled to his feet, but as he
looked round the circle of grinning faces, all many inches above him,
and as he thought of his own dear little Nellie "walking out" with the
fellow who was making his life unbearable, he felt a lump rise in his
throat; his fists unclenched, and in another second he had sunk down on
the upturned bucket, sobbing as if his heart would break, and his hot
tears mingled with the beer that was trickling from his hair.

"Law lumme, he's acshally _weepin'_!"

A roar of derision and disgust rose from the astonished soldiers. Then
every man solemnly fetched his drink, and poured it over the prostrate
lad. "'Weepin' Willie,' take thet," was the formula, as each man upset
the contents of his can.

At that moment the door opened, and those who stood nearest it drew
themselves up to "attention" as Captain Trevor, who had heard the noise
as he was passing by, strode into the room.

"What's this?" he said, addressing the crestfallen gang of tormentors.
"Off you all go to your barrack-rooms at once, and don't let this ever
happen again in A Company."

They were only too glad to get off so easily, and in less than a minute
Captain Trevor and Private Fox were alone.

"What does this mean, Fox? Why, surely, man, you've not been _crying_!"

"Please, sir, I couldn't 'elp it, I did feel so wretched like."

"You've left school now, remember that--we don't have men who _cry_ in
the army. Get back to your room at once, and don't let me ever see you
in this state again. I am disappointed in you, Fox."

Poor Willie, sick at heart and sore in limb, crept back to his
barrack-room, where he was greeted with jeers and hoots, but, mindful
of Captain Trevor's warning, his comrades abstained from stronger
measures that night.

The months that followed made his life a perfect pandemonium. All his
room-mates taxed their ingenuity to the utmost in order to devise new
tortures and humiliations for "Weepin' Willie."

His bed was always soaking wet, his kit and accoutrements hidden away.
They painted his buttons, they whitewashed his boots, they borrowed his
blankets. When a man could not sleep, he whiled away the hours of the
night by throwing the heaviest missiles he could lay his hands on at
the luckless youth. On wet afternoons Willie was "crucified" for the
public amusement, a process which consisted in tying up the patient's
wrists just above the door, so that whenever it was opened he got a
severe jerking. And yet through it all he never showed fight and never
complained, but bore blows and jibes alike with stolid indifference.
Although Captain Trevor never alluded to that awful night, Willie
instinctively felt that his hero despised him, and that hurt him more
than all the ill-usage of his room-mates. Nellie he had not seen since,
but she had scribbled him a line in pencil.

"MR. 'WEEPIN' WILLIE,'--You're a disgrace to the army. I hope never to
see you again till you've got given up crying.--NELLIE LINDON."

[Illustration: "SHE APPLIED A CORNER TO HER EYES."]

This masterpiece of sarcasm Willie kept in the lining of his tunic, and
it made him mad every time he thought of it. And so the weary weeks
passed by until the trooping season came, and then, much to the delight
of all the men, A Company was ordered out to the North-West frontier
to join the first battalion as a draft to make good the ravages caused
by sickness and the enemy. As the train steamed out of the station,
Willie saw Nelly Lindon waving her handkerchief to Big Bob, and as his
carriage moved slowly past, she applied a corner to her eyes as if
wiping away an imaginary tear, but there was a mischievous smile on her
lips.


II.

"Them's the beggars we've got to smash; look at 'em a-wasting of their
ammunition, as if hevery round on it wasn't stolen from the Govermint."

"That'll make some of the boys perspirite, I'm thinking," Sergeant
Thomson replied, as his eyes followed the direction of Big Bob's finger.

Half a mile or so from where the company was halted to refresh itself
after its tedious semi-circular march in the early dawn, a long sloping
hill, covered with stunted growth and unsteady boulders, rose gradually
up to the sky-line; some little way below the summit, a ledge of rock
ran parallel with the top, and it was at this ledge that Captain Trevor
directed his field-glasses.

"I'll send the men up to that ledge in skirmishing order," he said to
one of his lieutenants. "They'll be protected from the enemy's fire
once they get there, then we can re-form and do the rest with a rush;
I don't suppose it's more than a hundred and fifty yards to the summit
from there. What do you think, Mason?"

"I shouldn't think so; anyway I hope not, as we've got to do it, and
the general will be coming along on the far side in another couple
of hours. By Jove, Trevor, we'd better hurry up," he added, as he
looked at his watch. "We must clear those fellows off the summit by
six o'clock, and it's nearly half-past four now. How many of them are
there, do you think?"

"Only a couple of hundred, I suppose, but if we don't clear them
out of that they could play the very devil with the brigade; it's a
sheer drop of 200ft. into the road from where they are, and they'd be
rolling those great boulders on to the fellows' heads. Company, fall
in. 'Tention! You will advance in skirmishing order up to that ledge
of rock. Section commanders to keep their men well in hand and to make
the best use of every bit of cover. Now, remember, no target-shooting
at those niggers on the sky-line! What I want you to do is to get to
that ledge as quickly and with as little loss as possible. The men will
widen out as far as they can, so as to offer no mark for the enemy's
sharp-shooters. Section commanders, tell off your men!"

Five minutes later the company was straggling along over the broken
ground in one long line, with wide gaps between the men, who were left
more or less each to take care of himself and choose his own way.

"Blow me if we ain't a-going to 'ave a treat now!" Big Bob shouted to
Little Willie, who was staggering along under the weight of his rifle
half-a-dozen yards to Bob's left, as a bullet went whistling in between
them. As the big man spoke his foot caught in a trailing creeper, and
he measured his length on the ground, his rifle going off as he fell.

Immediately a young recruit on the right, hearing the report, and
longing to have a shot at the enemy, brought his rifle up to the
"ready," took careful aim, and fired. Nothing is so contagious as
contagion. In five minutes the whole line were taking pot-shots at the
black figures on the sky-line. In vain did the captain and his two
lieutenants curse and threaten the men nearest them; in vain did the
non-commissioned officers urge their men forward--it was impossible to
do anything. The men were all over the place, some of them a hundred or
more yards apart, some lying down behind boulders taking aim, others
running forward a few paces, and then discharging their rifles from the
cover afforded by bushes or rocks. As they gradually worked their way
upwards, the tribesmen's good shooting began to take effect. First one
man dropped, then another; then one of the lieutenants threw up his
hands and fell forward, shot through the heart in the act of kicking a
man who was having a little private nigger-shooting competition with
his corporal. As the men saw their comrades fall they got more and more
chary of exposing their own persons, preferring to lie low and waste
ammunition on the sky-line.

Pitter-patter went the bullets on the stone-strewn hill-side, and the
soldiers crawled a little closer up to their sheltering rocks and
bent their heads down a few inches lower. There was not a man there
whom you could have called a coward with impunity. Had they been all
together--in line or column--they would have gone up the hill like a
herd of buffaloes, with wild cheers and gleaming bayonets, and never
given a thought to the dead and wounded. But, scattered as they were
over the whole hill-side, with only now and then a comrade's white
sun-helmet coming in sight, it was too much to expect of any man with
a loaded magazine and clear view of the enemy that he should go on up,
alone for all he knew, with the bullets singing around him.

In vain had Captain Trevor called the men nearest him a pack of
white-livered curs; in vain had he referred to their parents and
antecedents in terms that would have shocked and astonished his
eminently respectable aunt, the Dowager-Countess of Trevordine. At
last he gave it up in despair. "Lie there, you infernal idiots, and
blaze your ammunition away. I'll be cursed if _I_ stand and score for
you!" And, fuming with impotent rage, he returned his sword to its
scabbard with a vicious click, placed his hands in his pockets, and
continued the ascent alone.

"Just as if 'e was goin' on a Halpclimbin' hexpedition," as one of the
men remarked.

"'E'll git a bloomin' 'ole knocked in his carcuse afore 'e's gone fur,"
Big Bob yelled to the man nearest him, as he refilled his magazine and
settled his elbows preparatory to wasting more cartridges.

[Illustration: "ONE OF THE LIEUTENANTS THREW UP HIS HANDS AND FELL
FORWARD."]

How Captain Trevor ever reached the sheltering ridge which was to
have been the rendezvous remains a mystery; but reach it he did
without a scratch. One man alone was there to welcome him: "Weepin'
Willie" furtively drew his sleeve across his mouth to try and disguise
the fact that he was munching a commissariat biscuit, and stood at
attention as his officer came up. It was Willie's first experience of
active service, and he did not know if it was etiquette to be seen
breakfasting while under fire.

"That you, Fox? D---- it, man, give me your hand! You're the only man
fit to be a soldier in the whole company."

Willie blushed up to his ears with delight. At last he had retrieved
himself in his hero's estimation. Almost reverently, he took the
captain's outstretched palm.

"Thank ye, sir," he said. "Oi've been wishin' for this ever since ye
carried my rifle that day!"

"That's all right, my man. Let's have a look at your rifle." He looked
down the polished barrel. "You don't mean to tell me you haven't fired
a shot yet?"

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, thin I did misunderstand yer. I thought
as 'ow I 'adn't 'eard aright when I saw all the other blokes--I mean
fellers, sir--a-blazin' away. But as I ain't much of a shot I thought
I'd be on the safe soide, and I certingly did think as 'ow you'd told
us not to shoot."

"I'll get you to repeat that in front of the whole company, Fox, if
I can ever get them out of this cursed mess; it would be a lesson to
them."

Five minutes passed, and still not another man had reached the
rendezvous. Away down beneath them, some two, some three, and some four
hundred yards away, the little white helmets could be seen from time to
time as the skirmishers altered their positions.

[Illustration: "THAT YOU, FOX? GIVE ME YOUR HAND."]

"I'm going to see what the enemy are up to," Captain Trevor said, as he
clambered up the seven-foot ledge of rock that was sheltering the two
men. "Perhaps those beggars down there will see me then and come up!"

"Weepin' Willie" followed in the wake of his officer, and there the two
stood in full view of their own men, and a splendid mark for the enemy.
Once Willie almost ducked as a bullet "ventilated" his helmet, and the
next moment Captain Trevor staggered, and would have fallen had not the
private caught him in his arms.

Carefully, and exerting all his strength, for Trevor was a big man,
Willie lifted him over his shoulder, and began slowly to descend from
the ridge; but, as he gave a last look round, he saw the tribesmen
on the summit suddenly leap to their feet, and, brandishing their
murderous knives, begin to rush down the incline. In an instant, Willie
was up on the ledge again, and with the full force of his lungs--and
his lungs were the only big thing about him--he shouted to his comrades
below: "Run, yer blazing beggars, run! They're on yer!" And then, with
all the speed his feeble legs would allow, he clambered off the ridge
and began to stagger down the hill, the captain's long legs trailing on
the ground behind, scraping against the loose stones and starting them
rolling. On the little man stumbled, his knees giving under his heavy
burden, his breath coming in short sobs, and his heart beating like a
steam-hammer. What if he failed to save his hero!

Suddenly he became aware of a big man in "khaki" towering above him.
"Here, lad, give 'im to me!" and a pair of strong arms lifted the
captain easily, as Willie recognised Big Bob's voice. A cheer went up
from below as Lieutenant Mason and a dozen men with gleaming bayonets
came dashing up the slope. The tribesmen, who were just coming over
the ridge above, saw the little band, saw the fierce, determined look
on their faces, the blood-for-blood battle-lust in their eyes. "Illah
Allah," shouted the chief, "these are no coward-women after all!" and
discharging his rifle haphazard, scrambled down the ledge the way he
had come. In less time than it takes to tell, the dusky warriors were
laboriously following their chief to the summit again, closely pursued
by the Englishmen, while all along the slope white helmets and bright
steel flashed in the rising sunlight, as one after another the men
leaped to their feet and rushed upwards. In five minutes the struggle
was over, and just as the dusty, blood-stained men were opening their
haversacks to snatch a hurried breakfast, a troop of the Guides
cavalry, the advance guard of the brigade, came clattering along the
mountain road two hundred feet beneath them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a proud day for A Company when all the Fingal Valley Brigade
were paraded in hollow square to see private Fox receive the Victoria
Cross, and no man cheered louder than Big Bob.

"'Weepin' Willie' yer is, and 'Weepin' Willie' yer'll remain," he
afterwards said to the hero of the day, as all his comrades gathered
round to shake his hand. "I'd weep the 'ole bloomin' day if I thought
it'd make me behave as well as yer did under fire, 'ang me tight if I
wouldn't!"

"Aye! And if yer hasks my opination, 'e was weepin' cos 'is messmates
was such a bloomin' lot of coward, low-'earted skunks! And so we
are--compared with 'im, leastwise--ain't we, mateys?"

"Yes, yes. Rayther!" was shouted on all sides.

[Illustration: "ON THE LITTLE MAN STUMBLED."]

Then someone got on a commissariat biscuit-box: "Three cheers for
'Weepin' Willie,' our little nipper, the bravest man in all the
bloomin' brigade!" And the galvanized iron roof fairly rattled an
accompaniment to the lusty lungs of A Company.

The day after the 1st Battalion of Her Majesty's 210th Line--late of
the Fingal Valley Field Force--was landed at Plymouth, Nellie Lindon
received a registered envelope which contained many things. One was a
dirty scrap of paper with a few words in pencil on it, that had been
carried all through a campaign concealed in the lining of a private's
tunic. Then there was a plain gun-metal Maltese cross with the words
"For Valour" graven thereon; and, lastly, a line or two from Big Bob:
"Take my advice, Nell," he wrote, "and have the nipper."

And Nell did.




_Animal Friendship._

BY ALBERT H. BROADWELL.


Many of the instances of animal sagacity with which we have been
familiar from our youth have had but slender foundation of fact, upon
which is erected a terribly airy superstructure of fiction. In Mr.
Shepherd's "Animal Actualities," and in the present article, however,
the anecdotes about our lower friends are authentic--vouched for, in
fact, by their various owners--while the photographs from life are
indisputable evidence of their truth.

The dog, as is to be expected, from his occupying a position which
places him under constant observation, forms the subject of more
stories than any other animal; yet it is not known how far his
intelligence extends. Some enthusiasts aver that instances are on
record where a member of the canine race has committed suicide through
grief; but this certainly requires verification. Let us listen to Mr.
G. C. Grove, however, who tells the story of "The Inseparables." He
says:--

"I cannot refrain from telling the following story, which is vouched
for by my most intimate friend. On paying a visit to his uncle, who
is a farmer in Scotland, he noticed a handsome young collie and a
goose with a broken wing, constantly about together; indeed, they
were well-nigh inseparable. On inquiry he elicited the fact that,
when a puppy, the dog had flown at a gosling and had broken its wing;
ever since, it was noticed that the dog was not only cognizant of the
mischief he had done, but became so repentant, that from that time
forward he had taken that one bird under his special protection, though
his feeling towards geese in general remained unchanged; and now,
wherever the dog goes, there follows the goose, and _vice versâ_. It
is a pretty instance of contrition, and may be recommended as a useful
example."

[Illustration: "THE INSEPARABLES."]

One would have thought from stories that have come from Australia that
dogs and kangaroos were inveterate enemies. In our illustration we
seem, however, to have a direct refutation of such an erroneous belief.
We have here five dogs and a kangaroo, the Australian placidly munching
some carrot-heads. There has been no posing about this picture: the
subjects settled themselves together in the most natural fashion.

[Illustration: KANGAROO AND DOGS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

The dog has not only proved himself to be man's best friend, but he
seems to show a great deal of affection for other animals with which
he may happen to come in contact, either as occasional friends or more
often as constant companions. We have here, for instance, a number
of photos. showing the marvellous way in which animals fraternize
as though they belonged to one family. Professor Lorenzo, of 5,
Crowndale Road, N.W., has a most extraordinary collection of animals
of all kinds. It includes dogs, cats, tame rabbits and wild rabbits,
kangaroos, bantams, pigeons, cockatoos and parrots, and other pets.
Among these we find a friendship which is of many years' standing. A
spaniel and bantam are not often seen together, yet we have them here
in thorough good-fellowship. The dog is a lovable creature, and the
bantam knows it.

[Illustration: SPANIEL AND BANTAM.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

That very bantam, by the way, is the most cheeky fellow in creation.
He does not believe in roosting in orthodox fashion; but chooses, in
preference, some soft, velvety surface whereupon he can settle at ease
and remain as long as he pleases. As shown in the next picture, a cat
is another friend of his. Puss is almost crushed by the weight of
this most unblushing intruder, yet she does not move, lest she should
interfere with his comfort.

Cats and rabbits next come under notice. It may be interesting to quote
a pretty story told by Miss Hamond, of Cheltenham. She says: "The
following incident occurred under my own eyes during my residence in
Spain. The province of Jaen, in sunny Andalusia, is rich in minerals,
and the quaint old country town of Linares may be called the centre
of the lead-mining district, where a goodly number of Englishmen have
settled down with their wives and families and household gods, to make
the best of life under conditions very different from those to which
they were born.

"The children--as children do all the world over--used to keep a
good many pets of different kinds, and in one household which I
often visited--that of Mr. Romer, manager to one of the mining
companies--their name was legion. One afternoon when I came in to tea
there was a great commotion in the yard; obviously something important
had happened. I knew at once that it must be a new kind of pet which
somebody had given them.

[Illustration: BANTAM AND CATS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson_]

"'One of the miners has brought us some infant rabbits,' said Conchita,
the second girl, hardly able to speak from ill-suppressed excitement.
'They are such babies, they can't feed themselves; do advise us. They
will die if they are not fed soon.' A piece of rag dipped in milk
seemed the only way out of the difficulty; the infants took to it at
once. Indeed, they soon began to nibble at the milk in the saucer.
This problem was evidently solved, but the weather was very cold, and
they had doubtless been accustomed to a warm fur cloak about them. So
Conchita said, 'Might she take them to bed with her?'

[Illustration: CATS AND RABBITS.

_From a Photo. by A. J. Johnson._]

"'Take them in to Molly, and see if he will adopt them,' I suggested,
not intending to be taken at my word; but Conchita thought it an
excellent idea, and acted upon it at once. We all followed her. (I
must explain here that Molly was an immense tom-cat, fat and amiable;
he lived in the schoolroom in a wadded basket, which just fitted him
comfortably.) 'He will eat them up at once, of course,' remarked one of
the bystanders, 'and perhaps it is just as well that he should.' But
he didn't. That excellent cat allowed the mites to be stuffed into his
lap; they at once nestled down and Molly went off to sleep again. Some
of us looked in later in the evening to see what had happened. That
excellent cat was sitting up washing the rabbits! It was the funniest
thing in the world: he evidently remembered his own nursery days, and
was doing his duty according to his lights by his strange charges.
When he came to the long ears he paused, evidently mildly surprised at
the innovation, but those rabbits had a thorough licking before they
finally retired to rest. This sort of thing went on for a fortnight,
the rabbits feeding out of Molly's saucer of bread and milk with him
regularly, though it soon had to be changed for a soup-plate, and a
bigger bed had to be provided. At the end of the fortnight the rabbits
began to take so much exercise that it was difficult to keep them in
one room, and there were so many ferocious cats in the neighbourhood
that Conchita decided that the rabbits must be provided with a hutch
of their own, and so the pretty little comedy came to an end. It never
seemed to have occurred to the amiable Molly that they were good to
eat. We used to bring friends--scoffers and unbelievers, who went
out converted--to that schoolroom, and if Molly, the conscientious
foster-father, were sleepy and indisposed to show off, we used to put a
little butter on the infants' backs. This never failed to wake him up
and induce him to perform their toilet with much energy."

[Illustration: CAT AND DUCKLINGS.]

One of our Australian friends, who prefers his name not to be
published, but whose statements we have very good reasons to believe
to be absolutely true, sends us the extraordinary photo. given below.
"Away out in New Zealand," our kindly correspondent was able to take
this curious picture. He tells the following story in connection with
it: "Everyone knows how deficient in sense of maternal responsibility
are mother ducks, and some ducklings of mine, appearing neglected,
were put into a small box, with flannel, to add to their comfort. As
one of our cats happened to be present, and inspected them with some
interest, my wife said to her, 'Here are some kittens for you, Minna.'
Without more ado Minna jumped into the box, and there and then adopted
them as her very own. When they fell out of the box, she very tenderly
picked them up in her mouth and replaced them. When they pecked at
her after the manner of their kind, she very gently reproached them
with her paw, and seemed to try and tell them in her own language that
she had never seen well-behaved kittens behave in that way before.
Altogether they became a very happy family." Our correspondent says
nothing of their ultimate fate, but we would imagine that when the
ducklings first took to the water, the foster-mother's grief must have
been extremely touching. "On another occasion, however," adds the owner
of the ducklings, "I was standing, one evening, watching my Aylesburys
waddling home to supper and bed after 'a happy day at the seaside,'
when I noticed a little black-and-white duckling evidently not theirs,
which to my surprise was with them. It stopped and looked at me as
the others passed, and seemed to ask, 'What are you going to do with
me?' I picked it up and called the old cat. Putting the duckling in
a box, I said, 'There is another kitten for you, Minna.' Without a
moment's hesitation she once more undertook her strange maternal duty,
and took charge of the mite for some days, till she thought the little
one old enough to face a hard and cruel world by itself. The duckling,
which was called Kitty after its foster-mother, used to follow her
about the garden and up and down the veranda stairs. At last, however,
some boys--for there are cruel and thoughtless boys even in New
Zealand--killed it with a stone."

[Illustration: CAUGHT IN THE ACT. _From a Copyright Stereo Photo, by
Underwood & Underwood._]

Of foster-mothers we have indeed some extraordinary instances. They
show the truthful confidence with which little suckling animals will
approach, and regard as their mother, beasts of quite a different
species. We have here two instances of suckling pigs. In the one case
we have an amusing picture, showing how the little porker was caught
in the act, not only by the camera, but by the jolly farmer in the
background. Stealing milk from a cow, whose yield in consequence fell
noticeably short, was an injudicious thing to do, but it would not have
mattered much had piggie not been caught. The second photo., which
exemplifies a peculiar coincidence, was sent in by Mr. J. A. Hern, of
Wayne, Nebraska, U.S.A. It is a striking confirmation of the preceding
incident, with the difference that, instead of one thief only, we have
three, and already well satisfied they look.

[Illustration: WHY JERSEY LILY GAVE NO MILK.]

Another peculiar pair hail from the States. They live in Walsenburg,
Colorado, the photo being sent in by Mr. Thomas Bunker, of that town.
The mother ass in this case is a most interesting animal. Her ordinary
occupation is that of wood-carrier, as may be gathered from the load
on her patient back; but besides having to suckle her own offspring,
standing so gloomy, sad-eyed, and reproachful on the right, she also
has to nurse the exuberant little lamb seen in the very act of robbing
the little donkey foal of its natural right. The three animals belong
to an old Mexican, and the lamb was reared entirely on the milk of the
mother ass.

[Illustration: AN INFRINGEMENT OF FILIAL RIGHTS. _From a Photo. by
Thomas Bunker, Walsenburg, Colorado._]

The pretty terrier shown in the next illustration was once the happy
mother of an even happier family. Unfortunately, the puppies all died
soon after birth, leaving the mother broken-hearted. For a long while
the dog was inconsolable. It refused its food, moped, and grew thin.
One day, however, a tiny, motherless kitten was given to it. The gift
turned out to be the dog's salvation; it took the greatest care of the
little creature, and woe betide the unfortunate stranger who ventured
too near her precious charge. These pets belong to Miss J. Dresser,
of Bexley Heath, Kent, and we are indebted to her kindness for this
interesting photograph.

[Illustration: A DESPAIRING MOTHER'S SALVATION.

_From a Photo. by A.R. Dresser._]

Mr. Edward T. Williams, of Tedworth Square, Chelsea, owns a dove and
a dog. There is nothing very fresh in this item of news; but wait
a moment: that dog will carry the dove on his head for more than a
quarter of a mile! They are the staunchest of friends, and as soon as
the door of the cage is opened, out hurries the dove. It searches for
the dog, if the latter should not already happen to be waiting for his
rider in the immediate neighbourhood, and the dog seems to consider it
as an absolute duty to carry his friend about in this comical fashion.

[Illustration: DOG AND DOVE.]

Amongst other quaint and extraordinary friendships between animals of
diverse species, one of the most interesting is that so frequently
struck up between cats and horses. Pussie loves to make a fragrant,
hay-scented stable her daily lounge and to nestle against the warm
coat of the horse, who often takes his night's repose lying in his
stall with the favoured Grimalkin snugly sleeping between his iron-shod
hoofs. It was in Brook Mews, N., that the animal in question was
"snapped" amidst the eager and excited observations of the many
bystanders, who quickly thronged to see the fun.

[Illustration: HORSE AND CAT.

_From a Photo. by J. Marks._]

The ladies who have risen to such an elevated position in life are
mother and daughter. The sedate matron is fully alive to the importance
of the occasion, and has adopted an easy, graceful pose; while the
youngster, frisky and somewhat shy, was with difficulty persuaded to
settle comfortably down. Mother cat is an animal of very self-contained
and amiable disposition. She has contracted a fast friendship with two
white rabbits belonging to the coachman's little boy. They live in a
hutch in the stables, and are often allowed a little liberty for a
frolic with puss, who chases them in and out of an empty stall.

From Covington, U.S.A., comes another remarkable instance. Mr. E. E.
Cone, of that town, has a hen that displays a remarkably perverted
maternal instinct. One of the neighbours has a cat with four small
kittens. The cat would be faithful to her offspring were she not
prevented by the following circumstance. This particular hen had
been sitting for some time when she suddenly conceived the idea that
the care of the kittens was more to her liking. She, therefore,
promptly drove the mother cat away and took possession of the kits.
No hen-mother ever watched over her brood with greater care than has
this one over her mewing, squirming litter of kittens. The kittens
offer no objection, and, with the exception of the old cat, who looks
on at a safe distance, all is serene in this anomalous family. In our
photograph the hen is shown endeavouring to cover the four kittens with
her wings, but it does not seem a very easy task.

[Illustration: HEN AND KITTENS.

_From a Photo. by W.J. Cone, Covington, Ill._]

Extraordinary as this instance may seem, we have in a way a parallel
to it. We see a cat taking under her charge some newly-born chicks in
much the same way as the mother-hen did with the kittens. Mr. C. K.
Eaton, of Melbourne House, Montpelier, Bristol, very kindly sends us
the photograph.

It appears that, through some inexplicable reason of her own, the
mother of the chicks deserted them almost immediately after being
hatched, and consequently, there being no other means of rearing them,
they were for some time kept in the kitchen, where, after a few days,
they became fast friends with puss, who proved a splendid substitute
for the mother hen. She seldom left them, and when they were able to
get about she, for a long time, followed them about the garden. The
sight, needless to add, was an extremely pathetic one.

[Illustration: CAT AND CHICKS. _From a Photo. by W. Perkins, Wickwar._]

Miss Powell, of the Grove, Bishopton, Ripon, very kindly sends us the
annexed amusing little photo, of a guinea-pig with a tame rat on its
back. Now, who would ever have thought of such a peculiar freak of
friendship? The pig is one of a pair, which Miss Powell has trained
in harness. Brutus drags fair Venus about the room in a miniature
coach. They are now being taught to sit in loving companionship at a
tea-table. The rat is a tame one, and is an adept at various clever
feats, in the imitation of which the guinea-pigs are nowhere.

[Illustration: GUINEA-PIG AND RAT.]

And now for the strangest instance in our collection. This astonishing
photograph of a collie suckling a brood of young foxes was taken by Mr.
Brown at a farm near Lanark. The little rascals were found in a den not
a hundred miles from the farm. The farmer, with due solicitude, secured
the little family, and took it to his own fire-side. But what could a
respectable farmer do with a brood of young foxes? Now, it happened
that only a day or two before this remarkable find, a fine collie owned
by the farmer had become the happy mother of a family of her own. The
little collies were speedily disposed of, and the young brood of foxes
given to the mother and left to her kind solicitude. Wonderful to
relate, the dog took very kindly to them, and actually suckled them for
five or six weeks.

[Illustration: COLLIE AND FOXES.

_From a Photo. by A. Brown & Co., Lanark._]




_Miss Cayley's Adventures._

BY GRANT ALLEN.


XI.--THE ADVENTURE OF THE ORIENTAL ATTENDANT.

I did not sleep that night. Next morning, I rose very early from a
restless bed with a dry, hot mouth and a general feeling that the solid
earth had failed beneath me.

Still no news from Harold! It was cruel, I thought. My faith almost
flagged. He was a man and should be brave. How could he run away and
hide himself at such a time? Even if I set my own anxiety aside, just
think to what serious misapprehension it laid him open!

I sent out for the morning papers. They were full of Harold. Rumours,
rumours, rumours! Mr. Tillington had deliberately chosen to put himself
in the wrong by disappearing mysteriously at the last moment. He had
only himself to blame if the worst interpretation were put upon his
action. But the police were on his track; Scotland Yard had "a clue":
it was confidently expected an arrest would be made before evening
at latest. As to details, authorities differed. The officials of the
Great Western Railway at Paddington were convinced that Mr. Tillington
had started, alone and undisguised, by the night express for Exeter.
The South-Eastern inspectors at Charing Cross, on the other hand, were
equally certain that he had slipped away with a false beard, in company
with "his accomplice," Higginson, by the 8.15 p.m. to Paris. Everybody
took it for granted, however, that he had left London.

Conjecture played with various ultimate destinations--Spain, Morocco,
Sicily, the Argentine. In Italy, said the _Chronicle_, he might lurk
for a while--he spoke Italian fluently, and could manage to put up at
tiny _osterie_ in out-of-the-way places seldom visited by Englishmen.
He might try Albania, said the _Morning Post_, airing its exclusive
"society" information: he had often hunted there, and might in turn be
hunted. He would probably attempt to slink away to some remote spot in
the Carpathians or the Balkans, said the _Daily News_, quite proud of
its geography. Still, wherever he went, leaden-footed justice in this
age, said the _Times_, must surely overtake him. The day of universal
extradition had dawned; we had no more Alsatias: even the Argentine
itself gives up its rogues--at last; not an asylum for crime remains
in Europe, not a refuge in Asia, Africa, America, Australia, or the
Pacific Islands.

I noted with a shudder of horror that all the papers alike took his
guilt as certain. In spite of a few decent pretences at not prejudging
an untried cause, they treated him already as the detected criminal,
the fugitive from justice. I sat in my little sitting-room at the hotel
in Jermyn Street, a limp rag, looking idly out of the window with
swimming eyes, and waiting for Lady Georgina. It was early, too early,
but--oh, why didn't she come! Unless _somebody_ soon sympathized with
me, my heart would break under this load of loneliness!

Presently, as I looked out on the sloppy morning street, I was vaguely
aware through the mist that floated before my dry eyes (for tears were
denied me) of a very grand carriage driving up to the doorway--the
porch with the four wooden Ionic pillars. I took no heed of it. I was
too heart-sick for observation. My life was wrecked, and Harold's with
it. Yet, dimly through the mist, I became conscious after a while that
the carriage was that of an Indian prince; I could see the black faces,
the white turbans, the gold brocades of the attendants in the dickey.
Then it came home to me with a pang that this was the Maharajah.

It was kindly meant; yet after all that had been insinuated in court
the day before, I was by no means over-pleased that his dusky Highness
should come to call upon me. Walls have eyes and ears. Reporters were
hanging about all over London, eager to distinguish themselves by
successful eavesdropping. They would note, with brisk innuendoes after
their kind, how "the Maharajah of Moozuffernuggar called early in the
day on Miss Lois Cayley, with whom he remained for at least half an
hour in close consultation." I had half a mind to send down a message
that I could not see him. My face still burned with the undeserved
shame of the cross-eyed Q.C.'s unspeakable suggestions.

Before I could make my mind up, however, I saw to my surprise that
the Maharajah did not propose to come in himself. He leaned back in
his place with his lordly Eastern air, and waited, looking down on
the gapers in the street, while one of the two gorgeous attendants
in the dickey descended obsequiously to receive his orders. The man
was dressed as usual in rich Oriental stuffs, and wore his full white
turban swathed in folds round his head. I could not see his features.
He bent forward respectfully with Oriental suppleness to take his
Highness's orders. Then, receiving a card and bowing low, he entered
the porch with the wooden Ionic pillars, and disappeared within, while
the Maharajah folded his hands and seemed to resign himself to a
temporary Nirvana.

A minute later, a knock sounded on my door. "Come in!" I said, faintly;
and the messenger entered.

[Illustration: "THE MESSENGER ENTERED."]

I turned and faced him. The blood rushed to my cheek. "Harold!" I
cried, darting forward. My joy overcame me. He folded me in his arms.
I allowed him, unreproved. For the first time he kissed me. I did not
shrink from it.

Then I stood away a little and gazed at him. Even at that crucial
moment of doubt and fear, I could not help noticing how admirably
he made up as a handsome young Rajput. Three years earlier,
at Schlangenbad, I remembered he had struck me as strangely
Oriental-looking: he had the features of a high-born Indian gentleman,
without the complexion. His large, poetical eyes, his regular, oval
face, his even teeth, his mouth and moustache, all vaguely recalled the
highest type of the Eastern temperament. Now, he had blackened his face
and hands with some permanent stain--Indian ink, I learned later--and
the resemblance to a Rajput chief was positively startling. In his gold
brocade and ample white turban, no passer-by, I felt sure, would ever
have dreamt of doubting him.

"Then you knew me at once?" he said, holding my face between his hands.
"That's bad, darling! I flattered myself I had transformed my face into
the complete Indian."

"Love has sharp eyes," I answered. "It can see through brick walls. But
the disguise is perfect. No one else would detect you."

"Love is blind, I thought."

"Not where it ought to see. There, it pierces everything. I knew you
instantly, Harold. But all London, I am sure, would pass you by,
unknown. You are absolute Orient."

"That's well; for all London is looking for me," he answered, bitterly.
"The streets bristle with detectives. Southminster's knaveries have won
the day. So I have tried this disguise. Otherwise, I should have been
arrested the moment the jury brought in their verdict."

"And why were you not?" I asked, drawing back. "Oh, Harold, I trust
you; but why did you disappear and make all the world believe you
admitted yourself guilty?"

He opened his arms. "Can't you guess?" he cried, holding them out to me.

I nestled in them once more; but I answered through my tears--I had
found tears now--"No, Harold; it baffles me."

"You remember what you promised me?" he murmured, leaning over me and
clasping me. "If ever I were poor, friendless, hunted--you would marry
me. Now the opportunity has come when we can both prove ourselves.
To-day, except you and dear Georgey, I haven't a friend in the world.
Everyone else has turned against me. Southminster holds the field. I am
a suspected forger; in a very few days I shall doubtless be a convicted
felon. Unjustly, as you know; yet still--we must face it--a convicted
felon. So I have come to claim you. I have come to ask you now, in this
moment of despair, will you keep your promise?"

I lifted my face to his. He bent over it trembling. I whispered the
words in his ear. "Yes, Harold, I will keep it. I have always loved
you. And now I will marry you."

"I knew you would!" he cried, and pressed me to his bosom.

We sat for some minutes, holding each other's hands, and saying
nothing; we were too full of thought for words. Then suddenly, Harold
roused himself. "We must make haste, darling," he cried. "We are
keeping Partab outside, and every minute is precious, every minute's
delay dangerous. We ought to go down at once. Partab's carriage is
waiting at the door for us."

"Go down?" I exclaimed, clinging to him. "How? Why? I don't understand.
What is your programme?"

"Ah, I forgot I hadn't explained to you! Listen here, dearest--quick;
I can waste no words over it. I said just now I had no friends in the
world but you and Georgey. That's not true, for dear old Partab has
stuck to me nobly. When all my English friends fell away, the Rajput
was true to me. He arranged all this; it was his own idea; he foresaw
what was coming. He urged me yesterday, just before the verdict (when
he saw my acquaintances beginning to look askance), to slip quietly
out of court, and make my way by unobtrusive roads to his house in
Curzon Street. There, he darkened my face like his, and converted me to
Hinduism. I don't suppose the disguise will serve me for more than a
day or two; but it will last long enough for us to get safely away to
Scotland."

"Scotland?" I murmured. "Then you mean to try a Scotch marriage?"

"It is the only thing possible. We must be married to-day, and in
England, of course, we cannot do it. We would have to be called in
church, or else to procure a license, either of which would involve
disclosure of my identity. Besides, even the license would keep us
waiting about for a day or two. In Scotland, on the other hand, we can
be married at once. Partab's carriage is below, to take you to Euston.
He is staunch as steel, dear fellow. Do you consent to go with me?"

My faculty for promptly making up such mind as I possess stood me
once more in good stead. "Implicitly," I answered. "Dear Harold, this
calamity has its happy side--for without it, much as I love you, I
could never have brought myself to marry you!"

"One moment," he cried. "Before you go, recollect, this step is
irrevocable. You will marry a man who may be torn from you this
evening, and from whom fourteen years of prison may separate you."

"I know it," I cried, through my tears. "But--I shall be showing my
confidence in you, my love for you."

He kissed me once more, fervently. "This makes amends for all," he
cried. "Lois, to have won such a woman as you, I would go through it
all a thousand times over. It was for this, and for this alone, that I
hid myself last night. I wanted to give you the chance of showing me
how much, how truly you loved me."

"And after we are married?" I asked, trembling.

"I shall give myself up at once to the police in Edinburgh."

I clung to him wistfully. My heart half urged me to urge him to escape.
But I knew that was wrong. "Give yourself up, then," I said, sobbing.
"It is a brave man's place. You must stand your trial: and, come what
will, I will strive to bear it with you."

"I knew you would," he cried. "I was not mistaken in you."

We embraced again, just once. It was little enough after those years of
waiting.

"Now, come!" he cried. "Let us go."

I drew back. "Not with you, dearest," I whispered. "Not in the
Maharajah's carriage. You must start by yourself. I will follow you at
once, to Euston, in a hansom."

He saw I was right. It would avoid suspicion, and it would prevent more
scandal. He withdrew without a word. "We meet," I said, "at ten, at
Euston."

I did not even wait to wash the tears from my eyes. All red as they
were, I put on my hat and my little brown travelling jacket. I don't
think I so much as glanced once at the glass. The seconds were
precious. I saw the Maharajah drive away, with Harold in the dickey,
arms crossed, imperturbable, Orientally silent. He looked the very
counterpart of the Rajput by his side. Then I descended the stairs and
walked out boldly. As I passed through the hall, the servants and the
visitors stared at me and whispered. They spoke with nods and liftings
of the eyebrows. I was aware that that morning I had achieved notoriety.

At Piccadilly Circus, I jumped of a sudden into a passing hansom.
"Euston!" I cried, as I mounted the step. "Drive quick! I have no time
to spare." And, as the man drove off, I saw, by a convulsive dart of
someone across the road, that I had given the slip to a disappointed
reporter.

At the station I took a first-class ticket for Edinburgh. On the
platform, the Maharajah and his attendants were waiting. He lifted his
hat to me, though otherwise he took no overt notice. But I saw his keen
eyes follow me down the train. Harold, in his Oriental dress, pretended
not to observe me. One or two porters, and a few curious travellers,
cast inquiring eyes on the Eastern prince, and made remarks about him
to one another. "That's the chap as was up yesterday in the Ashurst
will kise!" said one lounger to his neighbour. But nobody seemed to
look at Harold; his subordinate position secured him from curiosity.
The Maharajah had always two Eastern servants, gorgeously dressed, in
attendance; he had been a well-known figure in London society, and at
Lord's and the Oval, for two or three seasons.

"Bloomin' fine cricketer!" one porter observed to his mate as he passed.

"Yuss; not so dusty for a nigger," the other man replied. "Fust-rite
bowler; but, Lord, he can't 'old a candle to good old Ranji."

As for myself, nobody seemed to recognise me. I set this fact down to
the fortunate circumstance that the evening papers had published rough
wood-cuts which professed to be my portrait, and which naturally led
the public to look out for a brazen-faced, raw-boned, hard-featured
termagant.

I took my seat in a ladies' compartment by myself. As the train was
about to start, Harold strolled up as if casually for a moment. "You
think it better so?" he queried, without moving his lips or seeming to
look at me.

"Decidedly," I answered. "Go back to Partab. Don't come near me again
till we get to Edinburgh. It is dangerous still. The police may at
any moment hear we have started and stop us half-way; and now that we
have once committed ourselves to this plan, it would be fatal to be
interrupted before we have got married."

"You are right," he cried; "Lois, you are always right, somehow."

I wished I could think so myself; but 'twas with serious misgivings
that I felt the train roll out of the station.

Oh, that long journey north, alone, in a ladies' compartment--with
the feeling that Harold was so near, yet so unapproachable: it was an
endless agony. _He_ had the Maharajah, who loved and admired him, to
keep him from brooding; but I, left alone, and confined with my own
fears, conjured up before my eyes every possible misfortune that Heaven
could send us. I saw clearly now that if we failed in our purpose this
journey would be taken by everyone for a flight, and would deepen the
suspicion under which we both laboured. It would make me still more
obviously a conspirator with Harold.

Whatever happened, we must strain every nerve to reach Scotland in
safety, and then to get married, in order that Harold might immediately
surrender himself.

At York, I noticed with a thrill of terror that a man in plain
clothes, with the obtrusively unobtrusive air of a detective, looked
carefully though casually into every carriage. I felt sure he was
a spy, because of his marked outer jauntiness of demeanour, which
hardly masked an underlying hang-dog expression of scrutiny. When he
reached my place, he took a long, careless stare at me--a seemingly
careless stare, which was yet brim-full of the keenest observation.
Then he paced slowly along the line of carriages, with a glance at
each, till he arrived just opposite the Maharajah's compartment. There
he stared hard once more. The Maharajah descended; so did Harold and
the Hindu attendant, who was dressed just like him. The man I took for
a detective indulged in a frank, long gaze at the unconscious Indian
prince, but cast only a hasty eye on the two apparent followers. That
touch of revelation relieved my mind a little. I felt convinced the
police were watching the Maharajah and myself, as suspicious persons
connected with the case; but they had not yet guessed that Harold had
disguised himself as one of the two invariable Rajput servants.

[Illustration: "HE TOOK A LONG, CARELESS STARE AT ME."]

We steamed on northward. At Newcastle, the same detective strolled,
with his hands in his pockets, along the train once more, and puffed
a cigar with the nonchalant air of a sporting gentleman. But I was
certain now, from the studious unconcern he was anxious to exhibit,
that he must be a spy upon us. He overdid his mood of careless
observation. It was too obvious an assumption. Precisely the same thing
happened again when we pulled up at Berwick. I knew now that we were
watched. It would be impossible for us to get married at Edinburgh if
we were thus closely pursued. There was but one chance open; we must
leave the train abruptly at the first Scotch stopping station.

The detective knew we were booked through for Edinburgh. So much I
could tell, because I saw him make inquiries of the ticket examiner at
York, and again at Berwick, and because the ticket-examiner thereupon
entered a mental note of the fact as he punched my ticket each time:
"Oh, Edinburgh, miss? All right"; and then stared at me suspiciously.
I could tell he had heard of the Ashurst will case. He also lingered
long about the Maharajah's compartment, and then went back to confer
with the detective. Thus, putting two and two together, as a woman
will, I came to the conclusion that the spy did not expect us to leave
the train before we reached Edinburgh. That told in our favour. Most
men trust much to just such vague expectations. They form a theory,
and then neglect the adverse chances. You can only get the better of a
skilled detective by taking him thus, psychologically and humanly.

By this time, I confess, I felt almost like a criminal. Never in my
life had danger loomed so near--not even when we returned with the
Arabs from the oasis. For then we feared for our lives alone; now, we
feared for our honour.

I drew a card from my case before we left Berwick station, and
scribbled a few hasty words on it in German. "We are watched. A
detective! If we run through to Edinburgh, we shall doubtless be
arrested or at least impeded. This train will stop at Dunbar for one
minute. Just before it leaves again, get out as quietly as you can--at
the last moment. I will also get out and join you. Let Partab go on; it
will excite less attention. The scheme I suggest is the only safe plan.
If you agree, as soon as we have well started from Berwick, shake your
handkerchief unobtrusively out of your carriage window."

[Illustration: "I BECKONED A PORTER."]

I beckoned a porter noiselessly without one word. The detective was
now strolling along the fore-part of the train, with his back turned
towards me, peering as he went into all the windows. I gave the porter
a shilling. "Take this to a black gentleman in the next carriage but
one," I said, in a confidential whisper. The porter touched his hat,
nodded, smiled, and took it.

Would Harold see the necessity for acting on my advice?--I wondered. I
gazed out along the train as soon as we had got well clear of Berwick.
A minute--two minutes--three minutes passed; and still no handkerchief.
I began to despair. He was debating, no doubt. If he refused, all was
lost, and we were disgraced for ever.

At last, after long waiting, as I stared still along the whizzing
line, with the smoke in my eyes, and the dust half blinding me, I saw,
to my intense relief, a handkerchief flutter. It fluttered once, not
markedly, then a black hand withdrew it. Only just in time, for even
as it disappeared, the detective's head thrust itself out of a farther
window. He was not looking for anything in particular, as far as I
could tell--just observing the signals. But it gave me a strange thrill
to think even now we were so nearly defeated.

My next trouble was--would the train draw up at Dunbar? The 10
a.m. from Euston is not set down to stop there in Bradshaw, for no
passengers are booked to or from the station by the day express; but
I remembered from of old when I lived at Edinburgh, that it used
always to wait about a minute for some engine-driver's purpose. This
doubt filled me with fresh fear; did it draw up there still?--they
have accelerated the service so much of late years, and abolished so
many old accustomed stoppages. I counted the familiar stations with
my breath held back. They seemed so much farther apart than usual.
Reston--Grant's House--Cockburnspath--Innerwick.

The next was Dunbar. If we rolled past _that_, then all was lost. We
could never get married. I trembled and hugged myself.

The engine screamed. Did that mean she was running through? Oh, how I
wished I had learned the interpretation of the signals!

Then gradually, gently, we began to slow. Were we slowing to pass the
station only? No; with a jolt she drew up. My heart gave a bound as I
read the word "Dunbar" on the station notice-board.

I rose and waited, with my fingers on the door. Happily it had one of
those new-fashioned slip-latches which open from inside. No need to
betray myself prematurely to the detective by a hand displayed on the
outer handle. I glanced out at him cautiously. His head was thrust
through his window, and his sloping shoulders revealed the spy, but
he was looking the other way--observing the signals, doubtless, to
discover why we stopped at a place not mentioned in Bradshaw.

Harold's face just showed from another window close by. Too soon or too
late might either of them be fatal. He glanced inquiry at me. I nodded
back, "Now!" The train gave its first jerk, a faint backward jerk,
indicative of the nascent intention of starting. As it braced itself
to go on, I jumped out; so did Harold. We faced one another on the
platform without a word. "Stand away there!" the station-master cried,
in an angry voice, and waved his white flag. The detective, still
absorbed on the signals, never once looked back. One second later,
we were safe at Dunbar, and he was speeding away by the express for
Edinburgh!

It gave us a breathing space of about an hour.

For half a minute I could not speak. My heart was in my mouth. I hardly
even dared to look at Harold. Then the station-master stalked up to us
with a threatening manner. "You can't get out here," he said, crustily,
in a gruff Scotch voice. "This train is not timed to set down before
Edinburgh."

[Illustration: "'YOU CAN'T GET OUT HERE,' HE SAID, CRUSTILY."]

"We _have_ got out," I answered, taking it upon me to speak for my
fellow-culprit, the Hindu--as he was to all seeming. "The logic of
facts is with us. We were booked through to Edinburgh, but we wanted
to stop at Dunbar; and as the train happened to pull up, we thought we
needn't waste time by going on all that way and then coming back again."

"Ye should have changed at Berwick," the station-master said, still
gruffly, "and come on by the slow train." I could see his careful
Scotch soul was vexed (incidentally) at our extravagance in paying the
extra fare to Edinburgh and back again.

In spite of agitation, I managed to summon up one of my sweetest
smiles--a smile that ere now had melted the hearts of rickshaw coolies
and of French _douaniers_. He thawed before it visibly. "Time was
important to us," I said--oh, he guessed not how important; "and
besides, you know, it is so good for the company!"

"That's true," he answered, mollified. He could not tilt against
the interests of the North British shareholders. "But how about yer
luggage? It'll have gone on to Edinburgh, I'm thinking."

"We _have_ no luggage," I answered, boldly.

He stared at us both, puckered his brow a moment, and then burst out
laughing. "Oh, ay, I see," he answered, with a comic air of amusement.
"Well, well, it's none of _my_ business, no doubt, and I will not
interfere with ye; though why a lady like you----" He glanced curiously
at Harold.

I saw he had guessed right, and thought it best to throw myself
unreservedly on his mercy. Time was indeed important. I glanced at the
station clock. It was not very far from the stroke of six, and we must
manage to get married before the detective could miss us at Edinburgh,
where he was due at 6.30.

So I smiled once more, that heart-softening smile. "We have each our
own fancies," I said, blushing--and, indeed (such is the pride of race
among women), I felt myself blush in earnest at the bare idea that I
was marrying a black man, in spite of our good Maharajah's kindness.
"He is a gentleman, and a man of education and culture." I thought that
recommendation ought to tell with a Scotchman. "We are in sore straits
now, but our case is a just one. Can you tell me who in this place is
most likely to sympathize--most likely to marry us?"

He looked at me--and surrendered at discretion. "I should think
anybody would marry ye who saw yer pretty face and heard yer sweet
voice," he answered. "But, perhaps, ye'd better present yerself to
Mr. Schoolcraft, the U.P. minister at Little Kirkton. He was ay
soft-hearted."

"How far from here?" I asked.

"About two miles," he answered.

"Can we get a trap?"

"Oh, ay, there's machines always waiting at the station."

[Illustration: "WE TOLD OUR TALE."]

We interviewed a "machine," and drove out to Little Kirkton. There,
we told our tale in the fewest words possible to the obliging and
good-natured U.P. minister. He looked, as the station-master had said,
"soft-hearted"; but he dashed our hopes to the ground at once by
telling us candidly that unless we had had our residence in Scotland
for twenty-one days immediately preceding the marriage, it would not be
legal. "If you were Scotch," he added, "I could go through the ceremony
at once, of course; and then you could apply to the sheriff to-night
for leave to register the marriage in proper form afterward: but as
one of you is English, and the other I judge"--he smiled and glanced
towards Harold--"an Indian-born subject of Her Majesty, it would be
impossible for me to do it: the ceremony would be invalid, under Lord
Brougham's Act, without previous residence."

This was a terrible blow. I looked away appealingly. "Harold," I cried
in despair, "do you think we could manage to hide ourselves safely
anywhere in Scotland for twenty-one days?"

His face fell. "How could I escape notice? All the world is hunting for
me. And then, the scandal! No matter where you stopped--however far
from me--no, Lois, darling, I could never expose you to it."

The minister glanced from one to the other of us, puzzled. "Harold?"
he said, turning over the word on his tongue. "Harold? That doesn't
sound like an Indian name, does it? And----" he hesitated, "you speak
wonderful English!"

I saw the safest plan was to make a clean breast of it. He looked the
sort of man one could trust on an emergency. "You have heard of the
Ashurst will case?" I said, blurting it out suddenly.

"I have seen something about it in the newspapers; yes. But it did not
interest me: I have not followed it."

I told him the whole truth; the case against us--the facts as we knew
them. Then I added, slowly, "This is Mr. Harold Tillington, whom they
accuse of forgery. Does he look like a forger? I want to marry him
before he is tried. It is the only way by which I can prove my implicit
trust in him. As soon as we are married, he will give himself up at
once to the police--if you wish it, before your eyes. But married we
must be. _Can't_ you manage it somehow?"

My pleading voice touched him. "Harold Tillington?" he murmured. "I
know of his forebears. Lady Guinevere Tillington's son, is it not? Then
you must be Younger of Gledcliffe." For Scotland is a village: everyone
in it seems to have heard of every other.

"What does he mean?" I asked. "Younger of Gledcliffe?" I remembered
now that the phrase had occurred in Mr. Ashurst's will, though I never
understood it.

"A Scotch fashion," Harold answered. "The heir to a laird is called
Younger of so-and-so. My father has a small estate of that name in
Dumfriesshire; a _very_ small estate: I was born and brought up there."

"Then you are a Scotchman?" the minister asked.

"I have never counted myself so," Harold answered, frankly: "except by
remote descent. We are trebly of the female line at Gledcliffe; still,
I am no doubt more or less Scotch by domicile."

"Younger of Gledcliffe! Oh, yes, that ought certainly to be quite
sufficient for our purpose. But then--the lady?"

"She is unmitigatedly English," Harold admitted, in a gloomy voice.

"Not quite," I answered. "I lived four years in Edinburgh. And I spent
my holidays there while I was at Girton. I keep my boxes still at my
old rooms in Maitland Street."

"Oh, that will do," the minister answered, quite relieved; for it
was clear that our anxiety and the touch of romance in our tale had
enlisted him in our favour. "Indeed, now I come to think of it, it
suffices for the Act if one only of the parties is domiciled in
Scotland. Still, I can do nothing save marry you now by religious
service in the presence of my servants--which constitutes what we call
an ecclesiastical marriage--it becomes legal if afterwards registered;
and then you must apply to the sheriff for a warrant to register it.
But I will do what I can; later on, if you like, you can be remarried
by the rites of your own Church in England."

"Are you quite sure our Scotch domicile is good enough in law?" Harold
asked, still doubtful.

"I can turn it up, if you wish. I have a legal hand-book. Before Lord
Brougham's Act, no formalities were necessary. But the Act was passed
to prevent Gretna Green marriages. The usual phrase is that such a
marriage does not hold good unless one or other of the parties either
has had his or her usual residence in Scotland, or else has lived there
for twenty-one days immediately preceding the date of the marriage. If
you like, I will wait to consult the authorities."

"No, thank you," I cried. "There is no time to lose. Marry us first,
and look it up afterwards. 'One or other' will do, it seems. Mr.
Tillington is Scotch enough, I am sure; we will rest our claim upon
that. Even if the marriage turns out invalid, we only remain where we
were. This is a preliminary ceremony to prove good faith, and to bind
us to one another. We can satisfy the law, if need be, when we return
to England."

The minister called in his wife and servants, and explained to them
briefly. He exhorted us and prayed. We gave our solemn consent in legal
form before five witnesses. Then he pronounced us duly married. In a
quarter of an hour more, we had made declaration to that effect before
the sheriff, and were formally affirmed to be man and wife before the
law of Great Britain. I asked if it would hold in England as well.

"You couldn't be firmer married," the sheriff said, with decision, "by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey."

Harold turned to the minister. "Will you send for the police?" he said,
calmly. "I wish to inform them that I am the man for whom they are
looking in the Ashurst will case."

Our own cabman went to fetch them. It was a terrible moment. But
Harold sat in the sheriffs study and waited, as if nothing unusual were
happening. He talked freely but quietly. Never in my life had I felt so
proud of him.

At last the police came, much inflated with the dignity of so great a
capture, and took down our statement. "Do you give yourself in charge
on a confession of forgery?" the superintendent asked, as Harold ended.

"Certainly not," Harold answered. "I have not committed forgery. But
I do not wish to skulk or hide myself. I understand a warrant is out
against me in London. I have come to Scotland, hurriedly, for the sake
of getting married, not to escape apprehension. I am here, openly,
under my own name. I tell you the facts; 'tis for you to decide: if you
choose, you can arrest me."

The superintendent conferred for some time in another room with the
sheriff. Then he returned to the study. "Very well, sir," he said, in a
respectful tone, "I arrest you."

So that was the beginning of our married life. More than ever, I felt
sure I could trust in Harold.

The police decided, after hearing by telegram from London, that we
must go up at once by the night express, which they stopped for the
purpose. They were forced to divide us. I took the sleeping car; Harold
travelled with two constables in an ordinary carriage. Strange to say,
notwithstanding all this, so great was our relief from the tension of
our flight, that we both slept soundly.

Next morning we arrived in London, Harold guarded. The police had
arranged that the case should come up at Bow Street that afternoon. It
was not an ideal honeymoon, and yet, I was somehow happy.

At Euston, they took him away from me. And still, I hardly cried.
All the way up in the train, whenever I was awake, an idea had been
haunting me--a possible clue to this trickery of Lord Southminster's.
Petty details cropped up and fell into their places. I began to unravel
it all now. I had an inkling of a plan to set Harold right again.

The will we had proved----but I must not anticipate.

When we parted, Harold kissed me on the forehead, and murmured rather
sadly, "Now I suppose it's all up. Lois, I must go. These rogues have
been too much for us."

"Not a bit of it," I answered, new hope growing stronger and stronger
within me. "I see a way out. I have found a clue. I believe, dear
Harold, the right will still be vindicated."

[Illustration: "I HAVE FOUND A CLUE."]

And red-eyed as I was, I jumped into a hansom, and called to the cabman
to drive at once to Lady Georgina's.




_Unique Log-Marks._

BY ALFRED I. BURKHOLDER.


Logs belonging to various individuals and firms in the lumber industry
of the North Western United States are identified and separated in a
striking fashion. To illustrate this it will be necessary to outline
briefly the routine of work connected with the great lumbering industry
of the regions mentioned. Logging camps are established in the heart
of a forest. Where no railroads have been extended to the vicinity of
the camps, roads are cut to the nearest river, which is the highway
by which the logs are taken in the spring to saw-mills, where they
are manufactured into shingles, lath, boards, timbers, and planks.
Therefore, proximity to a river is necessarily taken into consideration
when a camp is located.

[Illustration]

After the trees are sawed down by men engaged especially for this duty,
they are sawed into log lengths and hauled, perhaps several miles, to
the bank of the river. Some of the camps contain as many as 300 or 400
men, and this force is kept busy during the entire winter cutting down
trees, sawing them into logs, and hauling them to the river. Here they
are placed in huge piles, and it is at this time that the log-mark of
the owner is placed upon them by an individual known as the "scaler,"
whose duty it also is to measure the diameter of each log and keep a
record of it.

In this article we show a few of these curious log-marks--odd artistic
inventions of the untrained minds of the lumber-camps. There is no
attempt at uniformity in ideas. Anything that has the least bit of
distinctiveness about it is sufficient for the purpose, which explains
the presence of pound-marks, tea-pots, frogs, babies, yokes, division
signs, and wheel-barrows in the illustrations for this article.

[Illustration]

The instrument with which the "scaler" places the mark upon a log is
in the shape of a sledge-hammer, the back of the hammer portion having
upon it a device similar to the log-mark of the man by whom he is
employed and to whom the logs belong. The log-mark itself is raised to
a height of about 1½in. or 2in. above the surrounding surface of steel,
and when the sawed end of a log is struck with it, the mark of the
owner is punched into the end of the log to a depth which prevents its
obliteration, unless the whole end of the log is sawed off and removed.
Crude designs, differing from the regular log-mark, are sometimes cut
into the bark of the log to assist in more readily identifying the
owner. Copies of log-marks and cattle-brands are, as provided by law,
placed on a file in the office of the county recorder of deeds in the
county in which the cattle owner or lumberman operates.

For greater convenience the ice in the river is thickly covered with
the logs as spring approaches. When the break-up of ice in the river
occurs, and the stream is swollen by the melting of snow and the
early spring rains, what is called the log "drive" commences. In some
portions of the lumbering regions the disappearance of the forests has
left the saw-mills further and further from the product without which
they cannot operate, and the logs have to be floated great distances.
Thus, a "drive" of 100 or 200 miles is nothing unusual, and on the
Mississippi river logs are frequently taken as much as 300 miles.

On one river perhaps a dozen or more lumbering firms, having no
connection with each other, are operating, and when spring comes all
their logs are rolled into the stream, to soon become so mixed up that
the novice naturally becomes of the opinion that their separation is an
impossibility. The work during a log "drive" is the hardest and most
dangerous connected with the lumbering industry.

The men are required to be up long before daylight, so that they may
eat their breakfasts and walk to the river, perhaps several miles
distant, arriving there at daylight to begin the work of the day.
Refreshments are taken to them twice during the day, at about ten
o'clock in the forenoon, and again at two o'clock in the afternoon.
They work until it becomes dark, when they walk back to their camps
to procure their suppers and much-needed rest. The log drivers are
required to keep the logs floating in the streams. In rainy or cold
weather, such as is frequently experienced in the lumbering regions,
their work is very arduous and debilitating. It is of the utmost
importance that the work of floating the logs out be pushed while there
is sufficient water in the streams, many of which become nothing more
than creeks later in the season, when dry weather sets in.

[Illustration]

The force of the current behind the huge mass of logs may force
hundreds of logs to a lodgment on the bank when curves in the stream
are reached, and then the men are compelled to work, perhaps waist
deep, in the water in order to clear the stranded logs and once more
get them afloat. The foremost logs are especially looked after and kept
on the move, for should they become lodged the obstruction thus formed
would speedily cause a log "jam," the thing particularly to be dreaded
by the drivers.

[Illustration]

Notwithstanding the extreme care and precautions, jams occasionally
occur. Then the logs are piled high in the air, the weight of the mass
sinking the logs to the bottom of the river, and extending from bank
to bank of the stream, forming an almost solid wedge, which constantly
becomes larger and more compact. It is nothing unusual for the logs to
be piled to a height of 100ft. or 150ft., and extending for several
miles up the river.

[Illustration]

A jam in the St. Croix river, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in the spring
of 1892, was about six miles in length. Another one that formed in the
Chippewa river, in the former State, in 1886, extended ten miles. This
river was also the scene, twenty years ago, of perhaps the greatest log
jam in history. It extended for a distance of twenty-five miles, and
was estimated to contain over 150,000,000ft. of lumber.

It sometimes requires several days' hard labour to "break" a jam. Not
infrequently a single log may be the cause of the whole difficulty, and
the removal of this "key" log is naturally a dangerous duty. It may
be lodged so tightly by the great mass of logs wedged against it by
the swift current of the river, that its removal is accomplished only
after chopping it in two with an axe. The man who does this takes his
life in his hands, for the removal of the "key" log almost instantly
releases the towering mass of logs behind it and the greatest agility
is required by the daring man to reach a place of safety ere the
released mass goes churning onward, forced to almost lightning speed by
the irresistible power behind it.

[Illustration]

The log drivers wear heavy boots, from the soles of which project
sharpened steel or iron spikes, placed thickly. With these, it in
time becomes an easy matter for the men to run about on the floating
and twisting logs with as much confidence as that exhibited by the
dweller in a city when striding along a pavement. Accidents, however,
occasionally happen, and some of the men are precipitated into the
water. Where an experienced hand loses his balance and falls into the
water he immediately becomes an object of ridicule, and is severely
bantered by his comrades. The involuntary bath of a new hand is taken
as a matter of course, and occasions no particular comment.

The men become surprisingly expert at log "riding," as it is termed.
A remarkable instance of this expertness was witnessed by a writer
while visiting the lumber region on the Ottawa and tributary rivers, in
Canada. He was sitting in his tent one evening on the west bank of the
River des Quinze, near the head of Lake Temiscamingue, when he heard a
young Frenchman on the opposite side of stream call for a boat to come
over him across. At the time, a great many logs were floating down the
river, the current carrying them close to the shore a short distance
above the point where the young Frenchman stood, and then sweeping
them diagonally across the stream close to the shore nearly in front of
the tent of the observer.

[Illustration]

No boat answering his hail, the Frenchman walked up the shore to where
the logs were pressing it most closely, and, watching his opportunity,
jumped upon one. With his hands in his pockets he unconcernedly
waited for his improvised ferry to take him to the opposite shore. In
midstream the logs were carried through a rapid. Here the log upon
which the young man was standing began to revolve rapidly in the swift
current, but he speedily checked the dangerous movement by forcing it
to revolve in the opposite direction.

During the strange journey across the river, which at that point was
fully 200yds. wide, he never for a moment lost his balance, and all the
time was whistling cheerily, apparently wholly oblivious of the danger.
When the log upon which he stood was swept across the river and close
to the opposite shore, he calmly leaped to the bank. He could not swim,
which, strange to relate, is the case with fully one-half of the men
engaged in the dangerous work of log driving.

[Illustration]

I am told by a gentleman familiar with the scenes and incidents
connected with log driving, that he has frequently seen the drivers
cross rivers which were comparatively free of logs, by standing upon
a log and with their feet making it revolve quite swiftly, and thus
gradually propelling it across the stream. Perhaps it was by observing
this operation that the inventor conceived the idea of a roller boat,
with which experiments have been made on the Atlantic.

When the logs have reached their destination the utility of the
log-marks is apparent. When the great mass of logs have been floated to
the vicinity of the saw-mills which will manufacture them into lumber,
they are brought to a standstill, and preparations are made to separate
the logs belonging to different owners. Long "booms" are constructed up
and down the river a short distance below the head of the drive of logs.

[Illustration]

Logs placed end to end, and securely fastened together, form the
"booms." The upper end is chained to piers or other immovable objects,
which are stout enough to hold the string of logs forming the booms. A
river is divided off into a sufficient number of "booms" to provide a
separate boom for each firm or individual having logs in the "drive." A
strong rope is then stretched across the river a short distance above
the ends of the booms. This swings only a few feet above the river, and
is for the convenience of the men who separate the logs and float them
into the proper boom.

The space between the shore and the first boom is exclusively for
logs belonging to a certain firm or individual; the space between the
first and second booms for those of another, and so on. As the logs
are floated down from the stationary "drive" above, which, perhaps,
fills the river from bank to bank, and extends up the stream as far as
the eye can reach, the men whose duty it is to separate the logs catch
them as fast as they are floated down to them, hastily glance at the
log-mark, mount the log, and, with the aid of the rope stretched from
bank to bank, pull themselves and the log to a point directly above the
boom of the owner of the log, and then release it, and permit it to be
carried by the current into the proper boom.

With the aid of pike-poles and other appliances, each man can take
care of a number of logs at one time, thus simplifying and expediting
the work of separating the logs. As many men as can work without being
in each other's way are stationed immediately above the booms, and
separate the logs with astonishing accuracy and rapidity.

The log-marks, as in the case of cattle-brands, reduce the theft of
logs to the minimum, as the tell-tale mark, if overlooked and not
removed, is a silent though convincing witness against anyone who
steals it and in whose possession it is found.

[Illustration:




A WEDDING TOUR IN A BALLOON

BY M. DINORBEN GRIFFITH AND MADAME CAMILLE FLAMMARION.]


Once or twice one has come across a story of some adventurous couple
(usually in America) who have been married in a captive balloon. The
incident is reproduced from time to time, the newspapers printing it
almost always placing on some other newspaper the responsibility of the
statement. The story may originally have taken its birth in a diseased
craving of some undistinguished couple for notoriety, or, as is more
likely, in a lack of striking headlines for some very enterprising
American paper. But in any case, we are concerned here with no such
matter, but with an actual wedding trip, undertaken and carried through
by a very distinguished couple, in a perfectly free balloon; and this
with no idea of notoriety-hunting.

The name of M. Camille Flammarion, the distinguished French astronomer,
is very nearly as familiar in this country as in France, and some of
his most important works are made popular by means of translations. He
is distinguished by an imagination very rare in men of science, and his
theories of the inhabitation of the stars are of a very striking and
beautiful character; while many other of his astronomical speculations
are similarly bold and original.

M. Flammarion's interest in ballooning began more than thirty years
ago, and since that time he has been a most enthusiastic aeronaut;
making very numerous ascents and recording large numbers of extremely
important scientific observations. His book, "Voyages en Ballon,"
contains many interesting accounts of his ascents, and has been
translated by Mr. James Glaisher, the English meteorologist and
aeronaut. It is of the wedding trip performed in a balloon by Monsieur
and Madame Flammarion that we are to speak.

Madame Flammarion is herself a most enthusiastic balloon-traveller.
Indeed, she has often said that nothing but the practical impossibility
of the feat prevents her living altogether in a balloon. And she
takes much delight in recounting the story of her wedding trip,
which was her first balloon ascent, and of a humorous incident which
characterized it. We shall give Madame Flammarion's account as nearly
as her own words can be rendered in English. The story was told us
in the beautiful garden of the Château Juvisy, the magnificent house
which is now M. Flammarion's home and observatory, but which has been
the resting-place of French Kings in their journeys between Paris and
Fontainebleau, from Henri Quatre to Louis Philippe. Parenthetically
we may say that Madame Flammarion is herself a distinguished person,
and Vice-President of the League of Ladies on behalf of International
Disarmament. This is her story as she tells it:--

I had always wished to make a balloon ascent. The stories and
descriptions I had read had touched my enthusiasm, and already, before
I had entered a balloon, I was, at heart, an enthusiastic aeronaut. To
hang in space above, looking down upon the rolling world below, and all
the little people in it, was for years the height of all my ambitions.
Nevertheless, I never expected to make an ascent in circumstances so
novel and charming as those which actually accompanied my first balloon
experience.

Just before our marriage, in discussing with my future husband the
form which our wedding journey should take, I begged him to choose the
most magnificent and poetical route possible--an ideal route, never
before made use of in the like circumstances. M. Flammarion understood
my meaning at once. Indeed, the same thought had occurred to himself,
though I first gave it expression.

From this moment Flammarion was busily engaged with the aeronaut,
M. Jules Godard, in making preparations for the aerial journey. But
preparations for the wedding itself also claimed attention, and it was
in some part in consequence of Flammarion's desires in this matter that
an odd incident made memorable the first part of our journey.

[Illustration: M. FLAMMARION (AT THE TIME OF THE WEDDING). _From a
Photo. by Alexander Martin, Paris._]

First we were married in legal form--in a manner corresponding to
marriage before a registrar in England. Flammarion wished this to be
the only ceremony, and desired no Church rite; in this being consistent
with his great astronomical philosophy, which I expect to be the
religion of the future. But in the end he waived his determination,
to please our mothers--and, I must confess, to please me also. But
he made the condition that there should be no confession, such as is
usually made part of the Roman Catholic ceremony. The good Abbé P----,
who was to officiate, expended all his eloquence to shake Flammarion's
determination in this respect, but his eloquence and his pains went for
nothing. It was useless to insist, Flammarion assured him, and he found
it so.

"But, my dear friend," pleaded the excellent Abbé, "if not a
confession, then at least something: merely a conversation."

"No! Never! Not even that!" was Flammarion's final answer.

"Then," persisted the Abbé, "you will at any rate grant me one personal
favour--nothing connected with the ceremony. Say, now, will you grant
me that favour?"

"Most certainly," Flammarion replied, rather incautiously. "Granted
before asked. What is it?"

"That I may ascend with you in the balloon."

"Abbé--you are a shrewd man. It shall be as you wish, of course. In
fact, the balloon will carry four, and as we ourselves, with the
aeronaut, M. Godard, make only three, there is a vacancy. You shall
fill it, Monsieur l'Abbé--it is promised."

Unfortunately, the outcome of this promise was very deep offence to a
very worthy man--so deep, that the Abbé was almost estranged from my
husband, as you shall hear.

Every detail of the events of our wedding-day is as clearly defined
in my memory as if it were but a recollection of yesterday. It was
a brilliant day, and all the town seemed as gay and as happy as we.
Still, there was one little matter of regret--our balloon trip must be
postponed for a little while, for M. Jules Godard had had an apoplectic
fit three days before, and was not yet recovered. This the Abbé did not
know.

The service, which was short, had finished, and we were in our
carriage--indeed, Flammarion was in the act of closing the door--when a
vigorous hand seized the bridegroom's and a joyous voice cried, "And I
also?"

It was the Abbé. In the confusion of our happiness we had quite
forgotten that he was to accompany us to the breakfast--to which, as a
matter of fact, he had been the first person invited.

The Abbé entered the carriage with no more ceremony, installed himself
comfortably, and carefully deposited a travelling bag on the seat
before him.

[Illustration: MADAME FLAMMARION (AT THE TIME OF THE WEDDING). _From a
Photo. by Dagron, Paris._]

"Hey! hey!" quoth the Abbé", laughing merrily and rubbing his hands
together. "Here we are, my friends! Well! We set out this evening in
our balloon, don't we? Eh? I have prepared--O yes, I have prepared!
I shall send messages to all my friends. I have filled this bag with
little papers, on each of which I have written: 'From the altitude of
the heavens I salute you. Abbé P----.' These we will throw out from the
balloon!"

"But, my dear Abbé," said Flammarion, a little taken aback; "we haven't
told you. We're not going now!"

The Abbé grew almost livid. "Come!" he stammered. "What--what's this?
Is it a joke? Anyhow, it isn't a good one!"

"I assure you, my dear Abbé, it is no joke, but the simple truth. We
_can't_ go, for Godard the aeronaut is ill. Three days ago he had an
apoplectic fit--indeed, he very nearly died. What should we have done
if the fit had occurred in the balloon? He is better now, but not well
enough to make the ascent."

The poor Abbé was thunderstruck. "And I was so counting on the
journey!" he said. "I've been telling everybody I know! People have
even been sending me provisions for the voyage. Truly, I don't know
where we should have put them; but that's beside the question--they
came. And now we are not to go! I shall be the laughing-stock of all my
acquaintance! It's too bad--too bad!"

All through the breakfast the Abbé remained melancholy, notwithstanding
the merry occasion, and the fact that Madame Godard, who was present,
assured him that her husband was quite unable to make an ascent in his
weakly condition. Till at last, in parting from him, Flammarion cheered
him by the assurance that he _should_ go up in a balloon after all,
for, in fact, the project was only deferred. And so the Abbé departed
hopefully. But who can count on the future? Fate disposed things
differently, and poor Abbé P----'s misfortune endured to the end of the
matter.

At last the time arrived, a week after the wedding-day. On the eve of
the day fixed for the ascent my brother-in-law--Ernest Flammarion, the
publisher--came to see us. He also wished to ascend with us; was most
eager, in fact. It must be remembered that, at the time I speak of,
balloon ascents were much less common than they have since become, and
one had very few opportunities of an experience in the air. In the end,
my husband promised his brother that he should come, if only the Abbé
should be prevented, or should from any cause forego his claim. Ernest
quite understood the situation, and waited with much anxiety, but with
little hope. "It's not of much use," he said. "The Abbé won't give up
his place. I'm afraid the thing's settled!"

The few hours intervening before the time fixed for the start were
hours of anxious watching. The weather was perfect, but we were
constantly on thorns lest some change should manifest itself.

But what of the Abbé? When the start was determined upon--on the
morning of the day when Ernest Flammarion called on us--my husband
hurried out to inform the Abbé, but found that he was away from home,
at La Varenne Saint-Hilaire, which he always made his summer residence.
Still, the Abbé's servant assured Flammarion that he would be back,
doubtless in the evening. So a note was written and left on the Abbé's
desk, thus:--

"We set out to-morrow at close of day in a balloon; do not miss this
celestial appointment, but meet us at about five o'clock at the
gas-works of La Villette.--FLAMMARION."

The eventful day (it was the 28th of August, 1874) dawned brilliantly,
and the day fulfilled the promise of the dawn--

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