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room. When he passed within a few feet of Dwyer, the latter peered hard at him, and with instant pent-in breath and frowning face, slipped forward as he thrust aside the rattan screen and entered.

"Magdalena, querida!" Ricardo exclaimed noisily. "Magdalena! Tate, tate! Thou sleepest heavily." He bent over and shook her by the shoulder. 'Tis I, Narcisco. Dios! You could not keep awake when I was coming to you!"

Dwyer's teeth clenched as he stared between the loose rattans at the halfcaste. The blood mounted to his face. Something hammered at his armor of resentful passivity.

Magdalena looked confusedly about, her eyes averted from Ricardo's face.

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'Tis I, nina; 'tis I. Not a word for me! Then a kiss, mea querida."

He sought to put his arms round her, but she struggled to evade him. Only for a moment did Dwyer linger, combating with himself. The next he was crossing the floor.

"Unhand her, you cur," he uttered, fiercely, clapping a hand on Ricardo's left shoulder.

The half-caste looked around in startled surprise, and let Magdalena fall back upon the pillows. His face flamed a dull red, and his under-jaw fell. Instinctively his hand sought his sheath-knife, but as suddenly withdrew again.

"Carajo! You-you-" he ejaculated in a high and savage voice. “You -here

At sight of Ricardo's thin-lipped, ferrety features, with its sallow skin contrasting so oddly with the bristling black mustachios and eyebrows, repulsion and hatred swept Dwyer off his feet.

He advanced to Magdalena, who was gazing at him in dumb uncertainty and wonder as if he were a supernatural vision.

"Magdalena, do you love this man?" She made a motion with her lips, but no speech came, joy and dread ravening upon her. She could but gaze at his stern face.

When Dwyer spoke again his voice was unsteady.

"Magdalena, do you love him?"
"Juanito! Juanito!"

"My letters, Magdalena?" "I got no letters, Juan." "No letters from me!" Dwyer paused dumbfounded.

"Madre de Dios. Is not one piece of sweetmeat, Senor Dwyer, just as good as another," Ricardo shot out sneeringly. "And so the Senor finds himself here."

"You swine!" the American grated. "Take that back."

"The insult is not yours. She is mine, here and hereafter. And yet

I discover you in this room, Senor." The insinuation took Dwyer like a dagger-thrust. He leaped at Ricardo, but the mestizo, springing back into the passage, snatched at the rapiers hanging there. A sinister grimace on his evil face, he handed one to him, and with that, impetuously attacked.

Dwyer barely parried the amazingly quick thrusts as, advancing and retiring agilely, Spanish fashion, the halfbreed assailed him more hotly. But recovering himself, he pressed him as hard, and forced him out into the varanda.

In the flashes of lightning, giving warning of Nature's approaching cataclysm, Ricardo was silhouetted sharp but confusing, as again and again he broke ground with dexterity and quickness. Twice he fleshed Dwyer in the sword arm, and once the latter, colliding in a backward step against an armchair, saved himself by a hair'sbreadth.

Suddenly there came a long, vivid flash of fire, instantly succeeded by pitch darkness; but Dwyer had lunged low and fiercely. A gurgling cry shrilled from Ricardo, and he fell in a crumpled heap against the table, to collapse with a thud into the rocker close by.

Calling loudly for Shooll, Dwyer flung his rapier away, and swiftly gained Magdalena's side.

"God judge between you and me," he uttered hoarsely, looking down at

THE MEANING.

her. "Magdalena, I have been faithful in body, mind and soul."

She gazed piteously at him. A gasp broke from her when physical throes lacerated her frame. Her Her fingers crept upon the lace of her body garment, and rent it asunder. The blood fled from her face. With a great sob Dwyer threw himself on his knees beside her, and imprisoned her hands.

"I was foolish, Magdalena, and jealous. I thought you had deceived me." She tried to carry his hands to her lips.

"Juan, querido," she whispered, “mine is the blame. I got no letters from you, not one, and I became mad, mad with your seeming neglect, Juanito. Ah, querido, it is now too late. Ave Maria, Nuestra del Refugio! Hark, Juan, what is that?"

In the pause of deep stillness between the peals of thunder, there sounded a drip-drop-dropping upon the veranda floor.

"Ricardo!" exclaimed Dwyer, rising from his knees. "Ricardo-bleeding to death. I must get Shooll."

Magdalena's eyes fell on Dwyer's blood-stained arm. Dread alarm convulsed her.

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"Yes, she will live now," said Shooll an hour later, as he and Dwyer stood on the veranda and watched the play of the storm. "Through the nervous shock that tumor has burst, and the inflammation won't give any further danger. Ricardo's loss of blood'll keep him quiet for a while. Very glad we got on him those letters of yours to her. He and her step-father must have managed to intercept them

I had my suspicions of that, for the post-office here is very slack—just the same throughout the islands. By Jehosaphat, isn't this a show!"

The house shook in the blasts, and the rain splashed noisily on the palmleaf roof. The thunder crashed and rattled in one continuous roll, and the incessant lightning revealed a turmoil of swirling trees with further glimpses of Samboangan anchorage whipped into foam and specked with wildly straining vessels.

But upon John Dwyer, as with halfunconscious eyes he gazed at the nightly occurrence of the rainy monsoon, there had fallen a great and glad

"You bleed, you bleed," she panted. joy, with radiant visions of Magda"The bandage-you first." lena's future and their marriage.

THE MEANING

When from the unknown comes a human soul,
Its greeting to the earth is one sharp cry;
When death draws near through doors that soundless roll,
The dying lips part in a soft, swift sigh.

What meaning there we cannot surely know:
A longing in the babe's first crying seems,
And deep contentment in the last low sigh,
As if the soul had turned to pleasant dreams.

ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH.

A Judas Gift

By Clifford Spitzer

H

ERE again, are you?

Not dead yet! Damn you, Kanaka, isn't it about time for you to ma-ke (die)? I'm losing money on you!"

Moki Kama, the old Hawaiian, merely smiled and hobbled to a seat. He took not these words to heart. Mathew Fuller always greeted him thus when he came each year to collect his annuity of two hundred dollars.

Everybody in Honolulu knows Mathew Fuller. Real estate agent and loan shark, with an unsavory reputation, he keeps an office on the second story of a building on Merchant street opposite the post-office, where he sits. at a desk close to the stairway ready to pounce on his patrons like a chickenhawk as they ascend the steps. Medium height, stocky and athletic, swarthy of complexion and black whiskered, almost Jewish in appearance, though he denies Semitic blood, Mathew Fuller possesses a sort of fierce handsomeness-the kind that strikes terror in the hearts of young children. In business, his fellow Caucasians, familiar with his character, avoid him religiously, but he waxes wealthier each year, nevertheless, on transactions with the innocent native Hawaiians.

In 1900 Moki Kama, then already a decrepit, dried and shriveled old Kanaka of seventy, bent like a jackknife, deeded to this Fuller his kuleana (homestead) in Koolau in exchange for a life annuity of two hundred dollars and the privilege of occupying the kuleana during the remainder of his natural lifetime.

Mathew Fuller coveted this particu

lar piece of property which adjoined a tract already his. And, as the old native had been reluctant to sell outright, Fuller had made this contract with him, considering it, at the time, a clever deal. For he reckoned that the palsied old Kanaka, apparently with one foot in his grave, could not last but a very few years more at the most, and the land was worth in the vicinity of several thousand dollars.

But for once shrewd Mathew Fuller erred. Old Moki Kama did not die within the estimated time. Faithfully, Fuller had paid the annuity each year, expecting each time to be the last, but the years rolled on and on, and the Kanaka still lived, coming regularly every year the week before Christmas to collect his two hundred dollars. In twelve years he had not changed a particle. He was still the same old petrified brown man; and the years did not appear to have any more effect on his old desiccated carcass than they have on the mummies in the museum.

Mathew Fuller was thoroughly exasperated. Never before in all his dealings with Hawaiians had he be held one so old and infirm, yet so tenacious to life. He sought a reason for this native's longevity, and discovered to his disgust that Moki, in his old. age, had turned teetotaler.

When Fuller beheld Moki Kama come hobbling up the steps this morning, he spoke sharply on the impulse of the moment, but quickly realizing the futility of mere invective, he bottled his spleen, reached for his checkbook, and when he did speak, he spoke quite gently:

"Moki, how are you feeling?" be

A JUDAS GIFT.

asked, as he blotted the check and tore it from the stub.

"I maikai (well), thank you, Mr. Fuller."

"But, Moki, you aren't looking very well this time, I notice. You look sick. What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?"

"No, I no sick."

"But, Moki, you look sick. You look weak-terribly weak. How have you the strength to walk about? Moki, a man of your age needs some stimulant occasionally-something to brace him up. It's all right when you're young, but old men like us need it. You're far from well to-day, Moki, and you've got a long journey home before you. I have a bottle here-better take a little. It will do you good."

Fif

"No, no! I prohib-bishum! teen years I never take one drink. Before that I drink too much-drunk every day. But Jesus he save me at last. Glory be to Jesus!"

"Moki, you're a fool! Do you believe that twaddle the damn missionaries preach to you? Do you believe the missionaries themselves never drink? Why, man, they drink in private to their heart's content, and preach temperance afterwards to you fool Kanakas. Moki, you're a Bible student. How many of the grand old men in the Bible were prohibitionists? Didn't Christ, Himself, turn water into wine? What do you say that?

Moki, you're wrong! It's only because the missionaries have no aloha (love) for you Hawaiians-that's why they want to deprive you of liquor. And are you such a fool as to let them? Come! Let's drink together for a merry Christmas and many of them for both of us. Come on!"

147

me

was poola (stevedore) on the wharf, and heavy drinker. Then I got sick and old, and I think better go country and live in my kuleana where I got plenty taro and sweet potato; and wait for time till I ma-ke. There in Koolau I meet Mr. Gray, and he a good man. He come to see me. He make me join his church, and he make me prohib-bishum. From a boy, like most Kanakas, I drink heavy. I drunk every night when I got the money-one day, one bottle gin. But Mr. Gray-he and Jesus-make give up liquor. Then I feel much better. And I never drink again. Maybe if I had saloon near my place or liquor in my house, sometime, maybe, would get crazy and take. But, thank the Lord! I never got it when I want. In Koolau no saloon, and if a man want, he must make himself or order from Honolulu, and it come by the stage in two days. Many times my stomach has got crazy for liquor, but I no had it. And I go to Mr. Gray's house and he prays for me. And then I no want it after that. Every year I come one time to Honolulu. But before I go, Mr. Gray make me swear to him I no touch liquor in Honolulu. And when I swear by Jesus, I never break my swear."

"So that's it," said Fuller, half to himself, and he nodded and smiled. and turned his back on the old native, intimating that the interview was over.

"Aloha nui," said old Moki.

"Good-bye," said Fuller, and he listened as the old Kanaka tottered down the steps. On his face was a cunning grin.

It was a week later on the morning after Christmas when Fuller picked up his paper at breakfast and read the

"No, Mr. Fuller, I no can. Please following: Whether he was surprised or not, who shall say?

'scuse me."

"Moki, what's the matter? You used to be a pretty heavy drinker, didn't you? Tell me, why did you quit it? Don't you ever have any longing for the stuff any more. It's healthful at times."

"Mr. Fuller, you remember fifteen years ago? I live in Honolulu, and I

"Native Falls to Death. Aged Hawaiian, Semi-Intoxicated, Dashed Over Precipice.-Coroner Rhodes was called over to Koolau last evening to investigate the supposedly accidental death of Moki Kama, an aged Hawaiian, who, while in a semi-intoxicated condition, fell over a precipice

near his dwelling and was instantly Merchant street liquor dealers. With dashed to death.

"The old native was a protege of the Rev. Noah Gray, and for years has been known as a strictly sober and religious man. But evidently he deviated from his usual sobriety in the celebration of Christmas Day, and either accidentally or with suicidal intent, walked off a precipice, falling to instantaneous death on the rocks over five hundred feet below.

"In his dwelling was found a newly opened case of gin, with one bottle half empty. The Rev. Mr. Gray was astounded when told of this fact, and refused to believe that gin was found in the man's dwelling until he went to the native's hut and investigated for himself. He avers that the aged native has been a teetotaler for years, and believes that the case of gin must have come as a present from some friend in Honolulu. The case bears the label of Babcock & Company, the

THE

the liquor under his roof, the old Hawaiian was evidently overcome by the temptation, and broached it to his misfortune."

That day, at noon, Fuller sat in Lycurgus' Grill at lunch amongst a group of acquaintances. "Yes," said he, "I knew the poor old Kanaka well. He was a sort of pensioner of mine; and I felt badly when I heard of his death this morning. The poor old fellow was a terrible drunkard till some years ago, when the missionaries got hold of him and converted him. As a result, he signed the 'pledge,' and stuck to it, too, with more will-power than any Kanaka that I ever saw. But this abstinence was a cruel and excruciating torture for him in his old age, after a lifetime of intemperance; and, damn it, I'm glad to think that at least the poor old devil died happy with one more old time glorious debauch."

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Across the barren land for long and long,
One now may wander, hearing no bird's song.
The gaunt trees stretch to heaven in bitter woe,
Their old limbs leafless to all winds that blow.
A sad, faint gurgle is the brook's song now,

Dead leaves obstruct, dropt from the shuddering bough;
And now doth Nature with all-solemn art,

Speak out the one great grief she holds at heart.

So long hath she beheld the old world's woe,

That even as hers it is to feel and know.
The pain, the grief, the bitter tears that fall,
The friendships broken, lost-she knows it all;
And with this brushwork of her master hand,
The human world's sore pain she bids outstand;
Most like a mighty poet, flings from her
This winter song of sorrow, bids to stir
Among the yellow leaves the wild West wind,
To urge them to their graves with voice unkind.
Thus is it one may wander long and long,
Yet hear in all the land no sweet bird's song;
And thus it is the trees in bitter woe,

Offer their limbs to all cold winds that blow;
So, too, I know why the dull brook's flow now

Is choked with leaves from off the shuddering bough.

EVERETT EARLE STANARD.

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