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Mr. Wetherill arose and walked to the window. It was snowing, and I remembered that it was on such a day one year back that the bonny lady was in this very office by his side. "This is a correct copy, is it?" said the notary. "On your oath ?"

"So help me, God!" said Montgomery, solemnly. Then he continued:

"I sealed the note, and when Mr. Tom came in he says:

"'You here yet, Monty? I told you to go.'

"Then I said that Mrs. Wetherill had left-that she must have slipped out while I was in the back room. Well, he swore and cursed like a madman. He was beside himself. I expected he'd call up the garage where he hired his taxi, but he seemed to believe me. He was all night reading the note and packing up, and early the next morning he pays me, locks the rooms, and drives for the White Star dock. And I watched the steamer sail away with him on the deck. That's all. If it's the same to you, I'll go," touching his hat.

"Not yet," said Mr. Wetherill, and he sat down and wrote out a check for Montgomery. I guess it was a large one, for the man couldn't speak, and Mr. Wetherill said:

"I will always be your friend, Montgomery-count on me for that. You have removed a load from my heart."

Then he and my employer had a long talk as to where Mrs. Wetherill

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he kept quiet," replied Mr. Wetherill. "I admit I deserved it."

"No; he simply waited," said my employer, "until he was called upon. He's English, you know. Had he been called sooner he'd have toldthat's all. It's our fault. Probably Perry influenced your wife with his accursed stories until she was almost distracted, and turned to any one for sympathy. He is the only and real offender. Can you telegraph her Chicago aunt? She may be there. By the way, has your wife written since she left ?"

Mr. Wetherill admitted reluctantly, I thought, that she had, but that he had destroyed the letter unread.

"That might have given us a clue," returned my employer.

All of a sudden, up jumped Mr. Wetherill.

"Lancaster, I know now. She must be with her other aunt in Vermont. She was fond of her. It is she to whom Eleanor would first go in trouble."

"Then I'll write," said the lawyer. Just then the 'phone rang. I answered. It was Mrs. Wagner.

"Is Mr. Wetherill there, Maggie ?" she said, and I noticed that her voice trembled.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied.

"Oh, send him home at once, will you? Little Dick has pneumonia, and the doctor says that his father must be found."

Mr. Wetherill left with a white face, saying to my employer:

"If anything happens to my boy Lancaster, it will be a well deserved punishment for me."

Little Dick was dangerously ill. He had scarlet fever as well as pneumonia. For three weeks he was isolated with two nurses. Only Mary and his father could go in and out. He talked constantly of his pretty lady, and seemed to be trying to pull her down to him with his little arms. It was awful, Mary said, to see Mr. Wetherill. He shook like a child with sobs.

In the meanwhile my employer had

ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST.

telegraphed to the Vermont aunt, who replied that her niece had been with her since the night that she had left her husband's home. Whereupon Mr. Lancaster wrote to Mrs. Wetherill, begging her to return, but she refused. So when little Dick hovered on the borderland of life and death, calling for her constantly, then her husband telegraphed: "Our child is dangerously ill. You may save his life. For his sake and for God's sake, forgive if possible, and come."

And Mary says the next day a hansom drove up, and out of it steps the lovely mistress. At the front door stood Mr. Wetherill, with a new light in his eyes, hopeful-like. She asked quietly:

"Does he still live?"

"Yes, thank God," he replied, "but he is passing through the crisis now and is unconscious. I want him to

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see you first when he opens his eyes." "Thank you," she says. "He has never been far from me, Richard, sleeping or waking."

And the master then told her of how the child talked about her, and how he seemed to play with some one. The mistress grew pale and cried softly, and the master took her in his arms and said:

"Can you forgive me-some dayEleanor ?"

Then Mary says she put her head on his shoulder and sobs out:

"I forgave you that night. It is I who should ask it of you, Richard." Then Mary says Mrs. Wagner came with a happy face and said:

"Little Richard is conscious now, and is asking for his 'pretty lady,'" and the mistress smiled.

Then together the husband and wife go up to their child.

ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST

In the deep woods at sunset dwelleth peace;

There great trees murmur and choired night-winds sing;
A thousand flowers are always blossoming

In the deep sunset woods where dwelleth peace.

Here all thy thousand years are but a day—
And we as on thy borderland we stand,
We, too, we pygmies in the human band,
Here we may see the years as but a day.

Take us within, our breath would cease in thine,
O forest with thy balm of paths unknown!
Dim, tranquil, vast, thy silence claims its own-
Take us within, our hearts would rest on thine!

ALICE FELICITA COREY.

"California--May We Return"

By Elizabeth Anna Semple

H

AZELTINE sat three nights at the same table with the Girl before Providence (taking, for the occasion, the shape of the restaurant cat) enabled him to have any conversation with her of a nature more immediately personal than "Will you pass me the salt?" or "May I trouble you for the paprika ?" Since this was one of the places where a filling meal, including a glass of wine, could still be had for the modest sum of thirty-five cents, Hazeltine had been accustomed to dine there twice or even thrice in the course of a month; that is, until the first night he beheld the Girl; and, after that, not even the musicians who varied soulful Hungarian rhapsodies with ordinary American rag-time, were more regular in their attendance than he.

The Girl always sat in one place. The waiter kept it for her, so Hazeltine discovered, and, marveling at such unexpected discernment, tipped him fifty cents-an act which resulted in another seat at the same table being reserved with scrupulous fidelity. He took it with an innocent air.

She was a pretty Girl; even a man who did not particularly admire her might have granted that much; furthermore, she always was alone, a fact which filled Hazeltine with mingled wonder and satisfaction; and, as she dined, she read a book or a paper, and appeared utterly lost to what was going on about her-except when the musicians played Hungarian folksongs, particularly that one which Liszt used for a main theme in his first Rhapsodie Hongroise. Then the book was quickly closed or the paper

was allowed to slide unnoticed to the floor, while she listened, her eyes shining like twin stars; at these times Hazeltine's dinner would get very cold while he watched her.

Mere watching was eminently unsatisfactory, he decided, after three dinners when it had been his chief occupation. How much better would it be to talk to her, he reflected, and, when her eyes did shine, to have them shine on him. But, all the while, he had not the most remote notion of how such a happy sequence of events was to be brought about; and, rack his brains as he would, Hazeltine could think of no reason sufficiently valid to permit him to address her.

He need not have worried: the fates had taken cognizance of his plight, and, with the aid of the cat, were about to solve his difficulties in the simplest manner. The Girl, it appeared, was fond of cats, and had already made friends (no, acquaintance-"friends" seems almost too familiar!) with the large and lordly pussy that, each evening, promenaded haughtily from table to table, demanding rather than asking food. He had, in fact, been willing to linger long by the Girl's side because she fed him with choice tidbits of meat, right from her own plate. But, on the fourth evening, it may have been that she was particularly hungry-all the meat had vanished before the cat's arrival.

"Poor pussy! Poor old dear!" she murmured, bending over to stroke his head. "I'm very sorry, but there isn't a scrap left-I ate it all up, truly I did," for the cat, seeming to question the validity of this excuse, jumped on

"CALIFORNIA-MAY WE RETURN."

her lap and peered greedily into the empty plate.

"I have some meat here," Hazeltine interposed, eagerly; "it's got a little paprika on it, but a Hungarian cat probably won't mind that. Will you give it to her-I mean him?"

"Thank you very much," the Girl dimpled charmingly. "I don't suppose he's really hungry, but I hate to hurt his feelings by not giving him something when he seems to expect it. Are you sure you really don't want this meat?" Hazeltine nodded vigorously. "It's awfully good of you, and I'm sure the cat will be very much obliged." Whereupon she transferred a slice to her plate and began to cut it into tiny morsels.

"It seems rather absurd for us to sit at the same table every night at dinner and never even say 'good evening,' doesn't it?" hazarded Hazeltine; then, abashed at his own daring, he added hastily: "Here's another little piece. By Jove! Look at the way that beast bolts it down-as if he were half starved."

"Yes, it does seem rather absurd," said the Girl, responding frankly to the first part of Hazeltine's remarks. “I've thought so several times, but it would have been rather awkward for me to mention it don't you think so? Oh, pussy! do you only love me for what I give you?" This reproachfully to the cat, who, evidently aware that his mission as ice-breaker was now happily concluded, moved away toward other likely sources of food supply.

"That is a remarkably silly and ungrateful cat; nevertheless should he come my way again, he shall have the best my plate can afford-for I am grateful, even if he is not," was Hazeltine's somewhat enigmatical comment.

"It seems the more absurd," went on the Girl, taking no notice of this remark, "when we happen to come from the same State-for if you are not a Californian, then I've forgotten what the voices of my own people sound like," and she laughed with delight at the joy shining in his face as she put out a hand of fellowship. "Af

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ter all," she said, as he shook it till it ached, "a fellow-countryman does seem a fellow-countryman indeed-in a land of aliens."

Thus had the cat lent his humble aid toward the beginning of an acquaintance that ripened and prospered exceedingly. That evening, when they left the restaurant, Hazeltine was permitted to walk with the Girl to her lodging, down near Washington Square: a mark of favor perhaps due to the possession of common acquaintances, or it may be a tiny bit to the questioning inflection he had placed on "Berkeley" when he spoke of his own college.

"No-Stanford," the Girl answered, in a voice full of loving pride; then she laughed a merry little laugh as she went on: "But here so far from home, we must forget that we come from different colleges and only remember that we're Californians and a certain wonderful thing people call 'the college spirit' that makes even graduates of other colleges than our own seem more like our brothers and sisters than those who don't know, by experience, what such a thing would mean. Isn't it so?" And then she laughed some more at the unconscious fervor of his assent.

the evenings that followed swiftly, the mere acquaintance grew into friendship. They were, in truth, two lonely souls, each grateful to find some one "from home," as well as for the boon of congenial companionship, and so it was not long before each came to look forward to dinner-time as a sort of oasis in days frequently filled with petty annoyances and wearisome details. Hazeltine soon became aware that the Girl (her name was Alicia Ransome, but, to him, she was just "the Girl"-in capitals!) was employed in the mailing department of a publishing establishment, and earned the princely salary of ten dollars a week.

"I know it isn't much,” she admitted when he had exclaimed in horrorstricken protest, "but it may lead to something better. I can assure you

in these hard times I'm only too glad to have it-small as it is. Why, this morning my feet seemed to become chilled to the bone; a cousin of my Chief came in and spent a whole hour telling in minutest detail how anxious he was to have my job given to his wife's sister. First he spoke of her merits as a stenographer-and compared her work to mine, greatly to my disfavor. Then he went on to say how pretty she was-just as if that had been an additional qualification, which, sad to say," commented the Girl, dolefully, "it is because Chief simply goes down before pretty face. He is very polite to me -but not near as much so as he would be were I a baby-doll, blonde sort of person. Believe me, Mr. Hazeltine, if a girl has to work, her most useful asset is good looks!"

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"That's nonsense," Hazeltine joined severely, "and you know it. Do you mean to tell me that men who employ stenographers prefer one who looks like a wax doll and, like as not, works her jaws all the time chewing gun-for, to me, the two always seem to go together in the stenographic line. It's-it's-absurd."

"Absurd or not, it's true, as you would find out if you were an ordinary looking girl, seeking an ordinary job," was the Girl's unconvinced response.

"Anyhow," Hazeltine reverted to his original proposition, "to think of you having to do work of this sort is ridiculous. You ought to be-writing," with the air of one who has experienced a brilliant inspiration.

"And do you suppose I haven't tried?" questioned the Girl, halflaughing, half-sad. "Why, when I first came to New York I bombarded every editor I could hear of with manuscripts I had written at college, only to have them come back again, with unfailing regularity, when I sent stamps, and, I presume, go to the waste-paper basket when I didn't; at all events, none of them ever got into print. And by and by I decided that to try to write was worse than useless -it was merely time subtracted from

starvation. So I devoted the few energies still remaining to the active pursuit of a steady job- one that would bring in a sum, no matter how small, of real money every week; and after something of a struggle, I got it. When I am a little ahead I mean to take a P. G. course in Domestic Science, so that I can teach cookingthat's the only sort of teaching I could endure, and besides, it is the one thing I have the least vestige of talent for, though, in these days it does seem frightfully commonplace and oldfashioned to admit it, does it not? You would sit right up and take notice if you could taste the dinners I can cook, particularly after having eaten in restaurants for a while," casting a scornful eye on the concoction politely designated as "pudding."

"I only wish I could," Hazeltine replied with enthusiasm.

"So do I," responded the Girl, heartily. "Well, who knows? It may be that a rich uncle of mine is waiting to drop down on me from the clouds (where else he could come from I can't think), or I may be lucky enough to get some work that will pay well enough for me to have a tiny home of my own. Then you'll see."

One evening, the Girl's place was vacant, and Hazeltine ate his dinner in solitude for the first time since the beginning of their friendship, a prey, all the while, to lonely wretchedness that made him fully aware how deeply the Girl had grown into his life. Miserable questionings of what could have kept her away alternated with desperate longings for her presence; and when at length he turned his feet homeward, it is probable that no more absolutely and abjectly unhappy a young man could have been discovered throughout the length and breadth of all Greater New York.

The evening following, he reached the restaurant unusually early, and, to his extreme satisfaction, there sat the Girl in her accustomed place.

"Where were you last night-you don't know how worried I've been about you," he began, as soon as the

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