interrupted in a seat of the day coach nearly fell asleep.

Louisdale had kept an eager lookout for his friend, but as the train made its second stop he decided something had gone wrong, and that Nagel was busy pacifying passengers. Disappointed that chance had robbed him of a few minutes' pleasant company and nursing a very mild grouch at the number thirteen and at the girl who didn't care, he busied himself checking up his accounts again and pushed the Gavilon package farther out of sight.

With his book still open before him, his attention was attracted to the mallet lying alongside the ice-box, and he picked it up. He was wondering whimsically how much it would weigh, when the Express jerked with a jar, as though uncoupling. He looked at his watch, calculated their distance from Dryton, and fell to speculating upon their possible mishap. Lee called to him on his way to the engine.

"Break?" questioned Louisdale.

"We done run down some trouble on your bad luck number," grinned Lee. "Er the old man's stoppin' to git a squint at this here scenery. God knows there's enough."

Billy waited awhile staring out into the night. Not a star was in sight. Nothing relieved the blackness but the glow of the long train as he leaned out to look. Turning back to the comparative cheerfulness of his car, he went over to close his ledger. Another item attracted his notice, and Louisdale looked it over again to be sure. He heard Lee making his way back, and turned to intercept him.

"Hands up!"

Not an instant's warning. The proverbial man and his more than proverbial gun were not six feet away.

Billy's fingers itched for the mallet behind him, but with the first tingle came the thought of his carefully worked out theory. The man who mixed up with the owner of those alert, pale eyes behind the mask would not last long enough to call himself names. Contrary to most philosophers, Billy

put his system into practice, though even as he did so Elsa's rather quiet acceptance of his consistent arguments troubled him.

"Go ahead," he said disgustedly, "I am not fighting you; I don't get fighting wages."

"Good," snapped the other; "you know which side your bread is buttered. Maybe you can help get the stuff across the Rio."

Billy felt the motion of the train again. Slowly the express car moved ahead with the engine. Try as he would, Louisdale could not keep down the desire to make some move. Excitement was fast conquering reason. He stared straight past the tense trigger finger in front of him, under the man's arm and out the door. Then came the sound of a shot.

There is a very old ruse that has been worked so many times upon the man "who holds the drop" that an experienced outlaw will not fall for it. It consists of signing to an imaginary person behind the hold-up's back to make him turn. This man knew his business. Billy really had no intention of trying anything so simple, and at the same time so desperate. He denies it strenuously even now. He insists that he hardly knew he had shifted his position. He claims it was pure fright which made him back a step or two as he threw up his hands so that he stood beside the ice-box. However all this may be, when he actually saw the form of Nagel, the conductor, running past the door and headed toward the rear of the train, the expression upon his face and in his eyes was too much for the man behind the mask.

The outlaw whirled, and it was then that Billy's theories went begging. To catch up the mallet and to strike was an action quicker than his wits could be expected to work. Really, as he says, he was not responsible. Impulse is a factor rarely considered, but always to be reckoned with in a crisis.

That the man he struck went down like a stone and without a sound was due, of course, to one of Billy's show

Nagel had followed Lee to investigate the trouble, and they had just missed getting him as he made his run back to the coaches. There he had started a man back to Anderson to telegraph ahead the details of their plight. Digging out the scattered weapons and volunteers from among the passengers, he had determined to make what stand he could against the outlaws. When he found that Billy Louisdale had cornered the supply, there was nothing for it but to take off their hats to Billy and to hold a jubilee over his unpleasant companions.

They whooped it up in San Antonio. until Billy had to hide, so he took the reward that the civil authorities had given him for his services, and the watch tendered him by the express company, with an inscription in it that

"What's doing?" he called.

"For God's sake, where's the gang?" cried Nagel.

"Somebody's got away on the nags out there," Billy answered. "I've got two. Come in, you all, and hog-tie 'em. They're waking up."

Billy wouldn't stand for the celebration. Nothing was missing from the mail coach excepting what the second man carried.

They found the tracks of three horses beside the engine. The engineer and the fireman had been covered and ordered to pull ahead with the express car; then Lee had met the same fate. The man who brought the horses had held the three men and waited for the signal from his friends which did not come. His path led straight across the border into Mexico, but it was the Sheriff, next day, who found it.

Something had to be done soon to restore his equilibrium, but Elsa rather failed him.

"Billy," she began well enough, as she led him into the hall, "I'm very proud and very thankful."

Billy wondered what was coming.

"I'm glad," he told her politely. "First for you, and then because those two fellows finally woke up It isn't a good feeling, somehow, to think you've killed a man; but I hadn't much time to figure. The boss has offered me a job in town and a raise. Do you want us, Elsa-the raise and me?"

Elsa still held him off, but Elsa's eyes were very friendly.

"Billy," she demanded, "what was it you called a man who didn't put up his hands?"

"A perfect fool," acknowledged Billy, meek enough, apparently, "and I am," as he drew her close, "about you."

S

HE had hair of that golden brown
hue which is poetic either in
shadow or light.
Her eyes

matched it, having almost a tinge of red, but wonderfully deep and soft. In form she was neither slender nor buxom, but of that medium mold which invites two ways. The same thing could be said of her height. Her hands had the graceful inflections of flames. She was filling tea. It was her own little room, and a little table was set at one side, with a deep and luxurious chair beside it, into which in a moment she meant to sink.

It was a habit of hers to make tea for herself thus in her own room late at night-environed by the dainty knicknacks and pictures that seemed to belong to her personality-and to sip it with her own peculiar thoughts and dreams. What her position in society, as the Mayor's eldest daughter, compelled of her, she threw off when here.

And on hot summer nights she kept her window high open so that she could see the stars. It was like letting her soul loose.

The room was three stories up. It was all the greater wonder, then, how the man could have entered. But he stood there, regarding her through a red mask that looked as though it might have been stolen from some carnival, when she turned about from filling the tea. She gave a breathless gasp and shrank back on the table. The man had a hand behind him as though about to draw a deadly weapon. In a jerky, nervous, automatic way the phrase "presence of mind" drifted through her brain.

She smiled-that is, she thought she smiled. "I see that you are a bur

glar," she said. "Will you have some tea with me?"

The invitation was evidently so startling that the burglar removed his mask with a jerk. Then he stood, handsome, and six-foot, smiling quizzically at her.

"By Jove," he answered, "if it's on the square I will give up everything else for that pleasure.'

"It's on the square," she averred. "I will not call the police. You see, I have never had tea with a burglar before."

His manner became cordial instantly. "And I promise you," he said, "that you will be perfectly safe with me. You need not be nervous."

"I am not." It was quite true. She had recovered herself completely. Since he had stepped out of the night to her, the night of countless stars in which she dreamed, it was her mood, even her zest, to accept him. She could fancy herself welcoming an inhabitant of Mars in the same manner. And nothing that he could say or do, she knew, would surprise her.

Having set another place, and filled his tea, she sank in her big chair regarding him. His face was peculiarly intense, with clever eyes and clear skin. To his form and movements pertained something of a tigerish grace. He was alert and high-strung, yet, withal, a person of unusual and deep reserves. He pleased her in that she might well expect anything of him. His apparent attributes fitted the hour and the occasion.

"How long have you been a burglar?" she asked in a perfectly matterof-fact way.

"Oh, ever since"-he paused, eyeing her sharply. "You promise, of course,

that nothing will ever be repeated ?" "Are you not going to trust me?" she asked. And his eyes fell before her look. She changed her question.

"Did you come here to steal my jewels?"

For a considerable pause, and while her glance covered him, he made no reply. He seemed to be thinking intensely. Then he acquiesced suddenly. "Yes, your jewels! I had heard of them. In fact, I had seen them. A pearl necklace, isn't there, with a topaz pendant-the gift of an Indian Prince who put it on your neck one night at a ball in London, then chivalrously ran away, leaving it with you?"

"Seen them!" she echoed, repeating with opened eyes what had struck her most. "How could you possibly have seen them?"

"Well, I combine two professions. Besides being a burglar, I am a reporter on a newspaper. When not engaged in stealing jewels I take it out in reputations. Sometimes I have even the pleasure of writing up my own burglaries. I have reported different functions of society at which you were present. I always felt sorry for you, as it seemed to me you were a little too good for that sort of thing."

"So you concluded to come and steal my jewels."

The blood leaped for an instant to his face. "I thought, perhaps, you would not appear in society so often. if you did not have them."

"Then you think I am vain." There was a touch of the roused eternal feminine in her tone.

"No; but jewels are expected of a young lady of your social position and reputed wealth. You, yourself, are too beautiful to need them."

"That is a rank compliment." "An Irishman always speaks from his heart."

"Yes, to every woman he meets."

He leaned back in his chair and gave vent to a gust of low. melodious laughter. She was regarding him in a purely intuitive way as if summing him up.

"I am inclined to believe," she pro

nounced, "that you are the devil."

He returned her look with interest. "In that case," he replied with a sweet seriousness, "you would make me sorry, Miss Gray, that I were not human. But I am simply a poor thief, with a respectable profession on the side. The plan is common enough, particularly in society."

"But how did you become a thief?" She had set her elbows on the table, and, resting her head on her hands, was studying him deeply. He had sunk into a sort of restfulness in which his personality seemed invulnerable. His complete unconsciousness was like a mask in all it offered, yet failed to reveal; perhaps, because, within it, his own intelligence roved with such nonchalance, surety and ease. Without quite understanding him, but interested to do so, she felt perfectly at home with him. He exhibited what few men possess a perfect capacity for comradeship with a woman.

"Will you not tell me," she urged, prompting his silence and refilling his cup.

"It is a somewhat long and unusual story."

"You are simply adding to my curiosity." She leaned over and touched his hand with a finger, then two. "Do tell me."

"You would not believe it if I did. You could not realize how unusual some of my failings are."

"I do not think that I am quite ordinary myself. It is scarcely customary to take tea by oneself, or with a burglar, at this hour in one's own room."

"Pardon me! You are a poem; but I am crazy. If I thought you would understand

"I assure you I shall." Her brown eyes were bent upon him seriously, even sympathetically, meeting the undisturbed quality of his glance with one as steady. Except for the swish. of the warm breeze outside the open window, and the golden, pulse-like beating of the clock on the mantel, a deep si'ence filled the room; one of those silences that suggest fairy dan

cing and the restrained bass of gnomes, or weird, tripping music at once emotional and sylvan.

"Very well, then," he consented, at length, "I will tell you. It was through being on a newspaper that I acquired a passion for jewels. You will remember the notorious Stanhope robbery of three years ago, when Mrs. Stanhope, formerly Lady Beaufort, lost a quarter of a million dollars' worth of gems. Well, I reported it for the New York Sun. Also I caught the thief."

The tender red of the lips opposite him opened slightly in admiration. "You caught the thief?"

"Yes, but before I go any further, Miss Gray, would you mind telling me who has just entered the room adjoining yours? It is your father's den, isn't it?"

She had been so interested that she had paid no attention to the slight sound of footsteps or a door being opened in the hall without. In her present mood, her own four walls were her natural circumference, outside of which there was nothing.

"Yes, it is father's den, but how did you know it?" Her eyes narrowed for an instant, without disturbing him, however.

"The careful burglar necessarily knows the layout of a house before he enters it," he answered, simply enough. Both of them had instinctively lowered their tones.

He rose to his feet. "I think I will go. It would never do for me to be discovered here."

"No," she admitted, "and yet I really must hear the story. I am extremely interested. I don't know exactly why, but I am." She had risen, too, and stood facing him with a perplexed look. She was as nearly flustered as one could imagine possible to her, at least, in any sort of company. "I have father's mail for to-day here. If I went to his room and gave it to him, perhaps he would not bother us or hear us." The doubt expressed in her face, however, rid the proposition of possibility.

"No," answered her companion, "that would not do." Then he asked quickly: "What are you doing with your father's mail?"

"At home here I act as his private secretary. Usually I open his mail, but to-day he told me not to do so. It seems he expected something of a very private nature. Consequently, I just kept it for him. There it is over on the mantel."

Something in the other seemed to waken suddenly, but it was with his customary nonchalance that he glanced to where a dozen letters or so were heaped beside the clock. "I wish," he requested immediately, "that you would look out of the window and see that there is no one below.”

She ran to do so, catching her skirts in her hand, and leaning over the edge displayed to him an exceedingly dainty pair of ankles.

"Keep watch for a minute," he commanded. "Both your reputation and mine are at stake." He had crossed swiftly to the mantel, and, with nimble fingers, was silently sorting the mail. One letter he selected and slipped into his pocket, a smile lighting his face; the others he put back. Then from under his vest he unwound a thin silken ladder, and joined her at the window with it bunched in his hand.

"This will let me down," he said. "I came by way of that maple, dropping to the balcony from that limb just out of reach there. I guess there is no danger of being seen. This secluded, residential section is well adapted to my profession."

She smiled at him in a glowing, adventurous manner. "I want you to promise to come back night after tomorrow," she suggested, "and tell me the story. Shall I keep the ladder and let it down when you whistle, or coming up would the tree be easier ?"

"I think it would be," he returned, gripping her hand with an appreciative, accepting movement of his head. "I will come without fail."

Then, having fastened the ladder to the low iron balcony which surrounded