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OHN was working like a tiger for the next six months or more, and we all wondered what he was at But he hates to be pumped, and is always mighty close about his writing. We have an idea that he begins things and does not finish them. He is fastidious, and he does not turn out as much work as you would expect from the ease with which he seems to write.

One evening the following January I happened in on John, and found him sit-

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 ting in front of a fine old fire, smoking his pet pipe and clutching a very fat manuscript. Uncommonly cosey quarters he used to have. I never could see why a fellow like Brunt should want to get married and give up all the comforts of life. Things can never be the same again. It's sure to spoil half the fun,—especially for your bachelor friends. In my mind, at least, women are always associated with swallow-tail coats and sweet wine, and expensive ash-trays on queer little legs, that break if you look at them.

Women are well enough, of course, in their place—within their limitations, as the wiseacres say. At balls, for instance, or at dinner parties, they are very good company. At a ball, especially, one would always wish to see them. It's not much fun dancing with another fellow, even when he ties a handkerchief round his arm and dances "lady." But in a man's own house they always seem a little in the way.

To return to John and his den. It did

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 look pleasant there when I stepped in on that cold evening and found that great fire burning and the air fragrant with pipe smoke, and John, all by himself, hanging on to his manuscript as though he were afraid it might get away.

"Hullo, Jack," said I.

"Hullo, Dick," said he, with a pleased sort of grin. "You're just the fellow I was wanting to see."

Now if there is anything that makes a man feel good it is that kind of a welcome. So different from the way a woman sticks out her hand, and says, "Very happy to see you, Mr. Dickson." Not that that is such a bad thing to hear either, only you know they will say it just the same whether they mean it or not.

Well, I saw that I had come in the nick of time. I knew by the way John clutched his manuscript that it was finished, and by the way he said "Hullo" that he meant to tell me all about it. So I sat down and lighted my pipe and waited for him to begin.

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 "Well, Dick, I've finished my novel."

My real name, by the way, is Francis Dickson, though many people suppose it to be Richard from the fellows calling me Dick. Rather an annoying mistake, for I was named after my uncle the General, and not being distinguished myself, I am unwilling to lose any reflected glory. However, I was not so egotistical as to be thinking of that when John told me about his novel.

"Glad to hear it," said I, as though I had been in the secret all along. "What is it about?"

"Oh, all kinds of things."

"What is it called?"

"Spoils."

"Good title! And with your name on the title-page it will go off like hot cakes."

"Ah! But that is just the point. My name is not to be on the title-page."

"Not on the title-page? What is the reason of that?"

"Well, in order to start fair without any preconceived ideas on the part of the

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 public, I don't propose to sell my novel on the strength of Louis XI. or The South Pole. I want the public to be unbiassed. Then besides," he added, after a pause, "I am going to try an experiment."

There was a look in his eye which suddenly reminded me of that talk at the Pow-wow. Was it possible that John had written a novel for the purpose of clinching an argument? Nothing could have been, after all, more in character. But I curbed my curiosity and amusement, and asked, innocently enough: "Have you chosen your nom-de-plume?"

"Yes, just about. I am going to use a woman's name."

"You don't say so! And what is the name?

"Well, I have had several in mind. I should like to know what you think of," here he fixed me with his eye, as though he had been taking aim, and said, with a lingering emphasis—"Lilian Leslie Lamb"?

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 I still kept my countenance, though with difficulty. There sat John, great strapping fellow, with his sunburnt face and sandy moustache, his strong, pronounced features and keen eyes, the typical camper-out and club man, and in his great deep bass voice he was proposing to call himself Lilian Leslie Lamb!

He, meanwhile, did not seem to see the humor of the thing.

"Lilian Leslie Lamb" he repeated, weighing the words with evident satisfaction. "It is striking, it is alliterative, and it is intensely feminine. Moreover, the name might perfectly well be genuine. I once knew a girl named Mary MM. [sic] Morse. I always had a notion that the middle initial stood for Morris. Mary Morris Morse! That is very much the same kind of name, only I think mine is prettier, don't you?"

This self-complacency was the finishing touch. I put my head back and roared, and then, all of a sudden, Jack seemed to see the joke, and he struck his knee and

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 roared too. I declare! We hadn't had such a laugh since the day Old Hobbins forgot his wig.

Well, when we had got pretty well shaken up, we quieted down again, and talked the matter over soberly. That is, by spells. For every little while the absurdity of the thing would come over me and off I would go again. Brunt was good-natured about it, though he didn't alwaysjoinin. First of all, he swore me to secrecy. He did not want any halfway work, he said. He was going to give his experiment a fair trial. He thought he had written a good novel; and that settled the question in my mind, for John was always harder to please than his readers. He said that if the book should be a failure or even a half success, he should be free to admit that it was owing to the woman's name. He proposed sending it to the Sandersons. Bates & Bramford knew his hand, which might betray his identity, and then he thought novels more in the Sandersons' line.

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 "What!" I cried. "You're not even going to let your publishers into the secret? Supposing they reject it."

"Poh! Publishers are not such fools as people think. The Sandersons know a good thing when they see it, and that novel is a good one, I can tell you that to begin with."

He then gave me the outlines of the plot, which was a strong one, and we sat talking things over till nearly breakfast time. Jove! Those were good old times. I often wish them back.

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 }

(1) The workers of all countries, without distinction of political or trade union views, are interested in the preservation and strengthening of Soviet Russia. Besides the deep-rooted feeling of proletarian solidarity, it was the consciousness of this fact which led the working class parties to support the relief work and moved the working class to make the greatest sacrifices on its behalf. The support of the proletarian relief, which grew to one of the mightiest actions of International solidarity enabled Soviet Russia to pull through the blackest days of famine and finally to conquer it.

But already during the time in which the work of the famine relief was being conducted, large sections of the working-class organisations engaged in this activity, recognised that this relief in form of food alone would not be of great help to Soviet Russia. The economic war of the capitalist countries against Soviet Russia continues. The blockade continues in the form of refusal of credits and in every case where capitalist groups take up business relations with Soviet Russia they do this in order to make profits and exploit Soviet Russia.

Just as in every other conflict between Soviet Russia and its imperialist enemies, it is the duty of workers of all countries to take Russia's side against its enemies in this economic war and. to help it with all the means in their power, including that of the industrial relief.

(2) The best way for the workers to support Russia in the economic war is the political revolutionary struggle, and the increasing pressure upon their government to recognise Soviet Russia, and resume business relations with her on favourable terms. But if we take into consideration Russia's importance for all workers we must in addition to political activity, strive also for the maximum of economic help from the world proletariat.

Every factory, every workshop, which Russia can start going without capitalist credits, and with the support of the working class, is an effective support to Soviet Russia in its struggle against the imperialist robbers, and every improvement of the conditions within Russia, the first working-class state in the world, strengthens the International proletariat in its struggle against its class enemy, the bourgeoisie.

The Fourth Congress of the Communist International therefore, regards it as the duty of every workers' party and organisation, and especially of the Communist Parties, to render


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HE Sandersons were ready enough to accept the novel, and it was not long before the proof-sheets were arriving at my Office addressed to Miss Lilian Leslie Lamb, care of F. Dickson, Esq.

Everything went on swimmingly, and Spoils was published in time for the spring and summer trade. It made an enormous hit, as every one knows. There was a second edition out in no time, and the third and fourth were nearly simultaneous. It was republished in England,

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 and a handsome "consideration" remitted to the author.

Brunt was pleased, of course. Who could have helped being pleased? He was used to success, but not to this kind of success. His Louis XI. and his essays had given him an enviable reputation, but the public does not buy histories and essays by the bushel, and Brunt had never made such a brilliant dash at fame before.

And, after all, I do believe that what pleased John more than anything else was the fact that he had proved himself in the right. The woman's name had certainly not hindered the success of the book. He and I were both convinced that it had actually helped the sale. All the critics dwelt upon the remarkable power of the work, its "virile strength," its "incisive force," and they made haste to add that these qualities were tempered by "true feminine delicacy of feeling," and "nicety of perception." That was where John chuckled. He made a collection of all the reviews—a thing he had never taken

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 the trouble to do with his other books. In that whole collection there were only five notices which contained no allusion to feminine perception and delicacy. But he most of all prized those which declared that the characters were drawn with an "almost masculine power."

It was "nuts" to us, you may be sure. Yet I used to wonder that he could keep the secret. Glory is, after all, a thing a man is not likely to get too much of. But there was one thing that Brunt liked even better than glory, and that was, to prove his point.

"But you have proved your point now," I urged, when the newspapers were fairly crackling with praise. "Do let us tell the fellows at the Pow-wow, at least."

"Not yet," he answered, with quiet determination.

"Don't you mean ever to let them know?" I asked; for I was perfectly flabbergasted at his indifference.

"Oh, yes! Some time or other."

"But, great Scott! when?"

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 "Well," he answered, thoughtfully, "I shall wait for the twentieth edition, and then see how I feel."

I ought to have said before, that one of the most amusing features of the affair, in its early stages, was the letters which "Miss Lamb" received through her publishers. The Sandersons had been requested not to reveal the address of the new writer, by which means I was saved a good deal of bother. That is. The Sandersons forwarded the letters to my office, and no one else associated my name in the remotest degree with the famous authoress.

At first, as I said, the letters were immensely entertaining. No matter how commonplace or impertinent or high-flown they might be, they always served to heighten the humor of the situation. In fact the best of them—and there were some among them which any author might have been proud to receive—the best of them could hardly be so sensible or so well-conceived as to escape some striking

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 incongruity. At onetime we got into such a chronic state of amusement that we grinned when we didn't mean to, and the fellows asked us "What's the joke?"

One pouring rainy day Brunt came into my Office, and instead of sitting down comfortably he went and drummed on the window pane, gazing down on the umbrellas below, as though they had been a garden of jacqueminot roses. I knew there was something to pay, so when I got tired of waiting Isang out: "Let's have it, Johnny."

I wanted to call him Lilian at first, but he shut down on that. He had a notion I might forget myself. The fact is, he was afraid as a thief of being found out.

"Oh, it's nothing at all," he said, coming over and sitting down in the chair I keep for my clients. I used to hate that chair, for after I had had it several years it looked as good as new. Even now it is in better repair than it ought tobe. There are too many men practising law in New York.

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 Well, then Johnny pulled a letter out of his pocket, one I had sent around to him the evening before, and handing it to me, said: "Read that."

The hand was a lady's, and had the unusual advantage of being both stylish and legible. The letter was dated at Colorado Springs; and ran as follows:

":

"A glance at my signature may serve as a partial excuse for the liberty I am taking in writing to you. If it were not forthe coincidence in our names, I should know better than to trouble you even with an expression of the very great pleasure which your novel has given me. For there must be literally thousands who have enjoyed that remarkable book, and it would be a poor return to you were we to besiege you with letters.

"Your name and mine, as you will observe, are identical, and my aunt, Mrs. Ellerton, who takes a special interest in genealogy, is convinced that you are a long-lost cousin. Aside from the natural pride we should have in sucha connection, my aunt's hobby—I warned her that I should use the word—is strong enough to give the keenest zest to such an inquiry as she

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 bids me make, even were the bearer of our family name quite unknown to fame.

"To come to the point. My quite incalculably great grandfather came to America in 1625 and was one of the founders of the New Haven colony. His wife was Lilian Leslie, and the name has continued in the family in each succeeding generation. One of his descendants, our own ancestor, was an officer in the colonial ariny, and fellin an Indian skirmish; poor boy! He was barely twenty-one. His widow seems to have been too much engrossed with her one child to have fashed herself about family counections, whereby she unwittingly incurred the ceusure of posterity as represented in her very great granddaughter, my aunt. For, through her indifference to these vital matters, she appears quite to have lost track of her husband's only brother, William, whom my aunt persists in considering the founder ofa collateral branch. This William, being at the tine unmarried, removed to New York State, where he may, for aught we know, have fallen a victim to the Iroquois; though my aunt is unwilling to give him up. She is convinced that if New York were not such a large State, and if it did not harbor so many Lambs, and if those hitherto examined had not betrayed such astounding ignorance in the matter of genealogy, she would certainly

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 have discovered valuable cousins before this. As it is, her efforts have hitherto been fruitless, and I leave you to imagine her joy when she suddenly sees the possibility of success. A new Lamb of any description is always exhilarating, but a Lilian Leslie Lamb exceeds her fondest hopes.

"You will perhaps be interested to know what manner of people we are. I am happy in being able to assure you that we are extremely respectable, crime and abject poverty being alike unknown among us. The conventional black sheep has appeared occasionally within our fold and has been prayed over or disowned according to the temper of his immediate victims. As a family we run to the ministry, though one judge, a generation back, and a plucky young colonel, who waskilled in the war of the Rebellion, form a picturesque variation. A less picturesque variation occurred in the person of my own father, who went into copper. As he spent most of his time in the West, and died when I was a child, I never saw much of him. Indeed I have no near relatives besides my aunt, and I am free to confess that I should value a new cousin highly. I ought to add, in view of your talents, that neither my aunt nor I boasts a shadow of one. In fact, we are very commonplace sort of people. After this admission will

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 you still investigate the case as far as may be perfectly convenient? I am assuming that you have not, up to this time, occupied yourself very much with family trees. And indeed it seems hardly possible that any one woman should have the taste and capacity for both genealogy and literature. My aunt, at least, has not.

"Are there, then, any traditions in your family which point to an ancestor migrating from New Haven to New York in the seventeenth century? Do you know how far back the Leslie in your name dates? Also, are Henrys and Williams prevalent in your family? My ancestor was a Henry. Have you any instances of dark hair with blue eyes? That combination has been frequent among us. And, oh! one thing more! You don't happen to know of a stray malachite ear-ring among your people? My aunt treasures a hideous one of pre-historic date, and fondly hopes to discover its mate in the New York branch. Though why William Lamb should have carried off an odd ear-ring, and one of such extraordinary ugliness, to boot, is not quite clear to my mind.

"I believe I am writing rather at random, for I cannot imagine your reading as far as this. But being under bonds to my aunt to tell the whole story, I could not, in conscience, make the letter shorter. I will offer no apologies, but

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 leave you to make due allowance for the effect of a famous name upon an obscure person. So many people have actually asked me whether I wrote Spoils that my respect for the judgment of my fellow-creatures has perceptibly fallen. "I remain, dear Miss Lamb, "Very sincerely, "Your would-be cousin, "."

"Well, Jack," I said when I had finished the perusal of this interesting communication, "what are you going to do about it?"

"That is just the question."

"You might keep up the correspondence."

"Francis Dickson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," cried John, with so much warmth, that I was convinced that he had had the same idea himself, and that that was why he seemed so out of sorts. Brunt has always had the impulses of a Bohemian, together with the character of a gentleman, and they sometimes conflict.

I knew that nothing could entertain

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 him more than a correspondence such as he might perfectly well have carried on with this young lady, and no one ever the wiser, and it did seem such a pity to lose the fun, that I stood up for my suggestion with some spirit. It may be that, underlying my evil counsels, there was a confidence in John's invulnerability which caused the rôle of tempter to sit lightly upon my conscience. At any rate, I said, with that dignity with which, under certain circumstances, even a worm will turn: "I fail to see that I have said anything to be ashamed of, John Brunt, and I'll thank you to treat my suggestions a little less cavalierly."

Then, thinking I had vindicated my claims to respect, I went on, more pleasantly: "Come, John, let us talk the thing over sensibly. Here is this young lady, evidently a clever, wide-awake person, stranded in that heathenish West of ours, with probably not the shadow of intellectual stimulus or congenial companionship."

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 As I talked, each statement that I made was so convincing to myself that I seemed to come rapidly into possession of facts on the subject hitherto unknown to me.

"I really don't suppose, John, that she has a being to speak to but that old crank of an aunt, with her family trees and malachite ear-rings."

"She has but one of the ear-rings, Dicky."

"Oh! she has got the other one on the brain, which amounts to the same thing," said I, for I had no idea of being so easily put down.

"Go ahead!" said John. "Go ahead! Only I can't help wondering where you learned so much about the family."

"My dear boy," I answered, quite condescendingly, "I am blessed with average intelligence—that is all. Now, here is this poor girl, without a single interest in life, utterly cut off from the great world which is teeming with—"

"Hold on!" cried John. "You seem

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 practical support to Soviet Russia through economic relief action for the reconstruction of her industry in addition to the political revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.

(3) The most important task of the proletarian economic relief outside of Russia consists in the gathering of means to purchase machines, war materials, etc., for Soviet Russia. Besides the old methods of collections, gifts, entertainments, etc., consideration should be given to subscription to workers' loan for Soviet Russia by Party groups, trade unions, co-operatives, and other organisations of the working class.

The propaganda for proletarian economic relief at the same time furnishes the best opportunity for agitation in favour of Soviet Russia. It is therefore to be carried out in close connection with the national sections in the various countries.

Since this problem of the economic support of Soviet Russia is of great importance to the working class as a whole, it is necessary to create committees consisting of delegates from the various working class organisations similar to the workers' Committees for Russian Famine Relief, to organise and lead this action. The task of these committees or corporations is to interest the largest possible masses of the workers in economic relief.

These committees are subordinated to the Communist International.

(4) The employment of funds collected by these committees or corporations must take place in close co-operation with the existing Russian economic bodies, be it those of the State or of the workers' organisations.

(5) A mass immigration of foreign workers in Russia at the present time does not aid, but renders more difficult the reconstruction of Russia, and must not be advocated in any case. The importation of foreign workers into Russia must be limited to individual specialists which are especially necessary in certain enterprises. But even in such individual cases, this should take place only with the understanding and agreement of the Russian Trade Unions.

(6) The proletarian economic relief must combine harmoniously our aspirations towards the ideal aim of concentrating the International solidarity of the workers upon the relief for the first proletarian country in the world, and the desire to produce concrete economic results.

(7) In accordance with the principles of socialist co-operation, and industrial management, the surplus produce must be used only to enlarge the field of activity of the economic relief.


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 to forget that she has read Spoils. She can't starve on that."

"Yes, and evidently it has been an epoch in her life," I hastened to say. "Then think how much more inspiring would be a correspondence with the author of this Great Work." I found myself speaking in capital letters. But John did not seem particularly impressed.

"And so you would advise me to pass myself off for a woman in a correspondence with a young lady?"

"And why not? She is not likely to unbosom herself to a total stranger, man or woman. She won'ttalk of her private affairs in such letters. And, afterall, when it comes to the point, you area gentleman, a man of the world, and a great author. You will be giving her gold when she is looking for silver. There is no robbery in that."

Anybody else would have been rather struck by my metaphor. I was myself. But, bless you, Brunt doesn't care anything about metaphors. He can reel them

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 off by the yard. Why, in his essay on "Small Change" in the Wherewithal Series, they're as thick as spatters. The very title is a metaphor, and he does not make any more of them than a carpenter does of shavings.

I talked on in this strain for some time, till at last John burst out with a fine display of impatience.

"Don't talk bosh any more, Dick. I'm going to write my answer and be done with it. Come, get out of that!" With which he coolly turned me out of my own chair, and sat down at my desk, where he immediately fell to scratching away for dear life.

"I hope the other Lilian has better manners than you," I remarked, but I am afraid it was lost upon him.

Before he got through the rascal had torn up three or four sheets of my best Crane's Distaff note-paper, to which he was helping himself, with admirable assurance. Not that I minded the paper, though writing paper does happen to be

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 my pet economy. I suppose everybody has one. John's, by the way, is matches. But it was so unusual to see John make a mess of a letter that it amused me.

At last he wheeled around and held out the following specimen of epistolary art:

":

"Your kind and cousinly letter is just at hand, and it is with genuine regret that I find myself obliged to disclaim a relationship which I should be proud to own. I fear your aunt Mrs. Ellerton will think me the most unprincipled of women when I confess that the name which graces the title-page of my book is only a nom-de-plume, selected on account of its smooth and flowing qualities. It had not occurred to me that a signature chosen and combined for purely zesthetic reasons, might already exist, as a family name, and I can only offer my sincere apologies to you for the liberty I have unwittingly taken. Meanwhile I cannot wholly regret a misunderstanding to which I owe the welcome assurance that my book has pleased you. Unknown to me as you are, your letter convinces me that you are one whose approval I should value.

"Allow me to add, that, as it is my earnest wish to preserve a complete incognito, my pub-

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 lishers themselves not being aware that my name is assumed, I shall rely upon your betraying only to your aunt, the fact that I am sailing under false colors.

"Under which circumstances, it is with unfeigned contrition that I continue to sign myself,

"Though most sincerely yours, "."

"How's that?" asked John, who had been drumming the table during my thoughtful perusal of the letter.

"I should think that would settle the matter," said I.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think you will hear from them again."

"It doesn't sound rude, I hope."

"Rude! Quite the contrary. In fact I think it sounds a little chivalrous for a woman. But they won't suspect anything. And anyhow you certainly have not left the sign of an opening for another letter."

"How about the handwriting?"

"That smallish literary hand hasn't

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 any gender. Besides, I don't know whether you meant to or not, but you've minced your writing out of all nature."

"That's so," said he. "But I did it without thinking."

He seemed somewhat depressed, but he sealed the letter—with my crest, by the way,—and after he had put it into the bag for the office boy to post, he cheered up and I supposed he would forget all about it.

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HAVE often speculated as to why Brunt had so much feeling about that letter. I never felt quite sure whether it was the handwriting or only Fate. As nearly everything in the world is Fate,—everything, at least, but out and out pigheadedness—I suppose that it was Fate that did it. Still John was always a little conceited about his discrimination in regard to handwriting, and Miss Lamb's was about the best I have ever seen. It

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 had not only style and legibility, but unusual individuality. I only wish I could show it to you, but naturally I have not the originals of her letters.

There! Now, I have got ahead of my story! For I had meant to convey the impression at this point, that that was the end of the correspondence, as I am sure it ought to have been. I was intending to go on and give, with a few light touches, a sketch of Brunt as a society man; for he was quite stunning when he laid himself out, and I did not know but that I could remember some of the hits he made at the Van Deusenberg dinner the very next evening. But now that you know the correspondence went on, you will, of course, be in a hurry to hear about that, and you will not want to be told what Brunt was saying to some other girl whom you are not interested in. I think myself that a story is always a bore when it interrupts itself. Only I wish you had been at the dinner, as I was, to hear the discussion on Spoils. A

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 hostess would have been mortified to have given a dinner that year, in the course of which Spoils did not get talked about. They were comparing the book with something of Thackeray's, and Brunt would not hear of its holding a candle to Thackeray. In the heat of discussion, he said such severe things about the new novel that my neighbor confided to me that it only showed how jealous all the men were of Lilian Leslie Lamb!

Three weeks elapsed before the next letter came, and it was much more of a surprise to Brunt and me than it can possibly he to you, since you are prepared for it. The letter was a thick one, and I could hardly wait for John to put in an appearance at my office, which he had proposed doing that morning as he was expecting to hear from the Sandersons in regard toa ninth edition. I knew Miss Lamb's writing directly, of course. No one could ever mistake it. Brunt was as surprised as I had counted upon his being, and he

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 let the Sandersons' letter wait while he opened the Colorado one.

"Poems, by Jove!" he cried, and his face fell. "Ten to one they're trash."

As he spoke a half-sheet slipped to the floor and I picked it up. It was a poem to "The Solitary Sandpiper," beginning:

I thought the verses mighty good, and I was pleased, afterward, when I found that John liked them too.

"Are they her poems?" I asked.

"She says not," he growled, "but here, I will read you what she writes." Which he proceeded to do, with occasional comments thrown in.

The letter began, "My dear Miss Lamb," without any allusion to the name being assumed, which I thought in very good taste.

The letter went on as follows:

"How you will regret the courtesy with which you responded to my first letter, when you find

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 that it has brought upon you another, and a far more troublesome one. I can imagine your consternation at sight of the enclosed poems, and I am well aware that my conduct in sending them to you is unjustifiable. When I say that Tam sacrificing your convenience on the altar ofa friendship of my own it will hardly seem to mitigate the wrong. Nevertheless, I throw niyself upon your mercy. These poems are the work of one of my friends. She has written them from time to time in years past as a congenial exercise of her faculties rather than from any more ambitious motive. They seem to me to be not without value. My judgment, to be sure, does not count for much; yet hitherto I have known no one to whom I was willing to submit it in this matter. Ever since your letter came I have been possessed with the desire to have you see my friend's poems. I speak of her thus impersonally, in consideration of her wish to conceal her identity,—a feeling with which you, my dear Miss Lamb, must surely sympathize."

At this point the reader coughed slightly, but resumed:

"Please observe that she does not, at

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 this point, pursue the comparison," John remarked in parenthesis—

"Do you take any stock in the friend, Jack?" I asked.

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 "Not much," said he, with a sceptical scowl.

"You know she said in the first letter that she hadn't any talents."

"She said she didn't boast any."

"Great Scott! Jack, what a memory you have!"

He was reading the poems with very respectful interest I thought, handing them to me as he finished them. Besides the "Sandpiper," there was a fanciful little love song, a sonnet which I couldn't make much of, and the "Ballad of the Prairie Schooner," which has since become so popular. I could see that Brunt was a good deal impressed, and I didn't wonder. He read them all through several times and then he read the letter again. He always had a way of going on just as though I had not been by, which made everything very free and easy between us.

"Well, what do you think of them?" I asked, when he had had time to take them all in.

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 "I think them good," saidhe. "If the rest average as high, I should think they might stand on their own legs."

"Shall you write and tell her so?"

"What I should like would be to see the lot. But, confound it! that would involve a regular correspondence, and I should feel like a sneak and a villain."

"You don't want to make a clean breast of it?"

"No, I don't," he answered curtly.

"You might refer her to your friend, John Brunt. I'm sure if she has read your essay on "Verse versus Verse," she will have confidence in your judgment."

"Not such a bad idea," said John.

"An uncommonly good idea, if you would give a fellow his dues," said I.

"The handwriting is rather a hitch"

"Haven't you got a fellow copying for you somewhere? Make him write the Brunt letters."

"He can't sign for me."

"You can sign for yourself. You write

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 your name very differently from anything else. There is something quite reckless about your capital 'J,' and you wouldn't give Browning or Bismarck such a genial 'B' as you put into Brunt."

On second thoughts, however, he concluded that he would rather risk detection than do anything so as have an amanuensis, and, after much consultation, we agreed that if he continued to write extra small in his character as Miss Lamb, and if he were to exaggerate his own hand when it came time to assume the more familiar rôle of John Brunt, there would be nothing to excite suspicion. And events justified our confidence.

In his next letter, John, in the character of Miss Lamb, asked to be addressed.

which I thought indicated a greater impatience to receive his correspondent's future letters than literary people usually feel when appealed to in such a matter.

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T all came about very naturally—the correspondence with John, I mean. The two Miss Lambs agreed to turn all the manuscript over to Mr. Brunt, and in due course of time a package arrived, the size and weight of which would certainly have appalled a stouter heart than mine. Brunt, however, received it without flinching, and set to work, reading the contents, with very much the same dogged vim he used to put into his semi-annual "cram" at college. Only I doubt whether he ever found his Virgil or his Homer as interesting reading as these latest productions of the modern Muse.

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 His good opinion of the poems was, on the whole, confirmed, though he was rather taken aback by the character of some of them. An occasional note of bitterness was struck, which accorded ill with the easy tone of the author's letters—the author's letters, I say, for, with the best intentions, we could not fail to penetrate the thin disguise which Miss Lamb had chosen to throw about her identity. Happily, the misanthropic ones were of inferior merit, so that Brunt did not think it best to include them in the collection. But, as he said, their lack of artistic merit simply went to prove that they were a direct expression of a mood, which, though not poetical, was all the more likely to be real. If the public knew what he had spared them, they would be eternally grateful. As it is, I think all will admit that those pieces which he did select for publication, were well worth while. Take, for instance, the sonnet called "Knighted." Any one who is in the way of reading poetry

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 must be familiar with it. It is the only sonnet I ever went in for, but I think it regularly great. John says it's not one of the best of the collection. He talks learnedly about the last two lines being a couplet, and says it gives the poem the flavor of an epigram. Flavor of fiddlesticks! I say it's mighty good poetry, and most any fellow would like to have something similar written in honor of him!

But I must not go into the poems too much, for they are open to every one now. It is needless to say that John found a publisher for them. He usually does what he sets out to do, and, besides, the things only needed a friendly push in the beginning. The point of interest, as far as we are concerned, is the correspondence brought about by them.

Once launched in a straightforward correspondence in his own name, Brunt came out strong, and he conducted it with such skill as to draw the young lady out on more subjects than the main one. His

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 own letters would, I am sure, have been a mine of gold to any one, and Miss Lamb clearly found them so. As he proceeded to toss one nugget after another before her, the reserve with which she had entered upon the correspondence—the correspondence with John Brunt, you understand—gradually wore off, and she began sending him letters which were quite up to those she received. I say the reserve wore off, by which I mean that she began writing more fully upon this or that topic of general interest which John happened to broach in his letters. Yet when her correspondent happened upon any subject which she did not choose to follow up she could be as evasive as the Sphinx. Her letters to John were singularly impersonal. It was an interesting study to note the difference between those and the ones addressed to the fictitious Miss Lamb, to whom she occasionally wrote to report progress. The letters to John were longer and more varied, yet after reading a short note to "Miss

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 Lamb" we were both aware of having got a glimpse of the writer's personality, such as volumes of her letters to John would not have yielded.

What lent an added zest to our interest in Miss Lamb's letters was the skilful manceuvres by which the writer sought to conceal her identity with the author of the poems—or again, the cool and impersonal tone in which she wrote of them. In reference to a set of Love Sonnets which John thinks particularly good, the "Love Sonnets of Constance," she wrote:

"My friend was averse to offering these as well as some of the other pieces for publication lest they should be thought to be autobiographical. But I made haste to remind her that, as she would never be identified as the author, it could make no possible difference what people might think."

"If that isn't a pretty bit of defiance," John said. "The worst of it is, it convinces me that the poems in question are autobiographical."

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 "Why 'the worst of it,' Jack? What do you care about the state of mind of a woman you never set eyes upon?"

"Oh, I don't care, of course, only—blighted beings are not in my line."

But this particular "blighted being" proved to be very much in his line. He was just the man to feel the charm of a good letter, and, furthermore, he could never resist the fascination of an unproved point. We assumed that she was the author of the poems, but we were not in possession of certainty on the subject. Her age was also a much mooted question until we were lucky enough to get positive evidence on that point. The experienced tone of many of the poems had led us to think that she must be an older woman than we had at first supposed, but a chance conversation with Jim Arnold, the doctor, cleared that up for us.

It happened that Arnold dropped in at my rooms one evening and found Spoils lying on the table. I had been looking it through, as I often do to this day.

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said God, "there is no writing of the last of the Welsh."

Satan spoke up: "My Lord, your pledge concerned those judged on the Day of Judgment. Day is outing. The windows of the Mansion are lit; hark the angels tuning their golden strings for the cheer of the Resurrection Supper. Give me my robes that I may sing your praises."

"Can I not lengthen the day with a wink of my eye?"

"All things you can do, my Lord, but observe your pledge to me. Allow these people to rest a while longer. Their number together with the number of their sins is fewer than the hairs on Elisha's head."

God laughed in His heart as He replied to Satan: "Tell the Trumpeter to take his horn and the labourers their spades and bring to me the Welsh."

The labourers digged, and at the sound of the horn the dead breathed and heaved. Those whose wit was sharp hurried into


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 The beauty of Spoils is that it is such good reading! Arnold's eye happened to fall upon it, and he said he had often wondered whether its author might not be the Lilian Lamb he had known as a child, years ago when he was visiting in Connecticut.

"I was staying with one of my classmates," he said, "whose father's country place adjoined that of Mr. Louis Ellerton, a man who owned good horses. This Lilian Lamb was a niece of the Ellertons, a small child in a long-sleeved gingham apron, who was forever riding horseback on the branches of an old apple tree behind the house. One day her aged steed gave way, and down she tumbled with a broken arm. The village doctor was non est cumatibus, and I was called in to set the arm. I was a green hand and hadn't got my surgical nerves in training. I thought the child would scream, and I was scared blue. It was a hateful fracture and it must have hurt atrociously. But the little thing bore it

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 like a soldier, and when I got through she said, 'Thank you, Doctor,' with the sweetest little quaver of a smile. You don't often see a girl of seven or eight with the pluck of a soldier and the manners of alady. A thing like that shows brains as well as nerves, and I would give a good deal to know whether she wrote Spoils."

I did not volunteer any information on the subject. I was occupied with a simple sum in addition, by means of which I discovered that Miss Lamb could not then be more than twenty-five years of age.

John was greatly taken with the tale of the broken arm, which I made haste to pass over to him. But the fact of the young lady's youth did not shake his conviction that she wrote the poems.

"A woman like that," he said, "might have found time for plenty of experiences before she was twenty-five years old. She would probably make no more outcry over a broken heart than over a broken arm, and I can imagine

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 her being the best of company, when she was in the very thick of it. But if she happened to have a taste for writing she might take a fancy to put on paper what wild horses would not have dragged from her lips; and once having written such poetry as hers, she would have been more or less than human if she could have kept it to herself."

"Tcan fancy just what kind of a girl she is," John told me one day. "She is probably rather plain, but with a good deal of brilliancy of expression and a touch of cynicism in her face and in her talk. A flattering manner, I should say, but with the heart a little gone out of it. Just a little. Everybody wouldn't notice it."

"Only it couldn't escape a student of human nature like you, Jack."

"Nor a master of satire like you, Francis. No, we should not be deceived."

And John pursued the correspondence with unabated vigor.

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 It is really a great pity that I haven't those letters, for, without having read them, it would be difficult to conceive of two sane men taking the step we perpetrated later on. As it was, the letters led up to it very naturally.

As the time for the appearance of the poems approached, Brunt began to urge upon Miss Lamb the necessity for furnishing some sort of nom-de-plume to distinguish the book from any other collection labelled simply Verses. Here is her answer:

You are perfectly right in requiring a distinguishing name for either the book or the author, and I have at last persuaded my friend to choose one for herself. She proposes to be called 'Leslie Smith.' The Leslie she adopts out of compliment to me. The Smith for the sake of obscurity. It seems to me rather a good combination, and, as for my own share in it, I am so puffed up by having my name for a second time associated with literature, that I am almost ready to take it as an omen of distinction. I shall not even be surprised to find myself perpetrating a literary feat one of these

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 days. When I do, I shall insist upon Miss Lamb's rendering up her own name for my use. Do you think she would? It would be no more than a fair exchange. I only hope it is a name I should fancy. Marion de Montmorency or something like that, high-sounding and impressive. For I propose to write nothing less than an immortal epic."epic. [sic]

"That's a good one," I shouted, as John read me this part of the letter. "Confess, Jack, that is the first time a girl ever asked you, outright, to bestow your name upon her."

John laughed too, but with a slightly preoccupied air.

"I rather wonder that she should have ventured on the Leslie," he said, "but it makes a good name. There is contrast enough in it to make it hold together."

The poems of Leslie Smith were to appear early in January. It was not practicable to get them out for the holidays, and John said that was of no consequence. They were poems which would require time before they could gain general recognition. If there should be a demand

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 for them by the next holiday season it would be as much as we could hope for.

The business preliminaries being pretty well settled early in October, there seemed to be no special reason for keeping up so lively a correspondence as before. John evidently regretted this, and he cudgelled his brains for pretexts for writing. I do not mean that the letters ceased coming altogether, but there were pauses and John fretted. I was not surprised, about this time, to find him dwelling a good deal upon the winter climate in Colorado. He managed to beat up considerable information on the subject, and it all tended to prove that the man who had not seen Pike's Peak in mid-winter was a fit subject for commiseration. That, at least, was the drift of his communications to me. Preparing my mind, as I afterward learned, for his grand coup.

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NE day about the middle of November, John stalked into my office with his most determined air. If any one were to ask me what I consider to be John Brunt's chief characteristic, I should say it was determination. I have a will of my own, as many people would readily testify. In fact, I have, in my own family, a reputation for being rather stubborn. But, Great Cæsar! I am a mush of concession compared to John when

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 once he has an idea. So when he marched into my office that morning,—there didn't happen to be any clients at the moment—I was curious to know what he was after. I could see that he was in good spirits to begin with.

"Hollo, Dick!" said he. "I hope that's not a brief that I'm interrupting."

It was in reality a letter to my father, thanking him for a very opportune remittance. But Idid not think it necessary to explain, and I got it out of sight, saying, carelessly: "Never mind, old fellow! I'm not pressed for time."

John grinned, in a way I did not altogether like, and sat down on the arm of a chair.

"Well, Dick," he said, without more ado, "where do you suppose you and I are likely to be, week after next at this time?"

"If we are together," I replied, "we are likely to be in this office."

"You're out there!" he cried. "Better guess again."

"Perhaps you know more of my future

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 movements than I do," said I, pretending to resent his assumption.

"You may bet your hat I do!"

Sometimes when Brunt is in the very best of spirits, he relapses into the baldest slang. To rest his English, he explains.

"Bless you, Dick," I've heard him say, "you don't want to drive a willing horse to death—I shouldn't have any English left if I squandered it on you!"

"Perhaps you would be kind enough to enlighten me as to my immediate future," said I.

"Of course I will. That's just what I looked in for," and he glanced at me quizzically, yet I fancied a little doubtfully too.

"Fire away," said I, "but just bear in mind that the lease of this office has another year to run."

John had walked to the window and stood with his back planted against it, fixing me with that look which I think I have mentioned before, as though he were taking aim.

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 "You and I," he announced with deliberate emphasis, "are to be in Colorado—don't interrupt me—scaling Pike's Peak, strolling through the Garden of the Gods, where we shall probably pluck Olympian bouquets, bowling over the limitless prairies"—this with a grand flourish,—"penetrating into inaccessible cañons"

"And making the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Leslie Lamb," I suggested with a knowing smile. "It's a good idea, old man. Go, with my blessing, and count upon my being with you in spirit."

"No, Dick! I wouldn't give a nickle for your spirit. It's you I must have. Flesh and blood are good enough for me."

"You forget, my dear boy, that my flesh and blood are indispensably necessary to my clients—and also that the railroad companies have an unconquerable propensity to deplete the pocketbooks of flesh-and-blood travellers. Mine is not plethoric."

"Out again," cried John. "We are

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 both going at the invitation of my friend, Miss Lamb."

"At the invitation of Miss Lamb," said I, rather stupidly I confess.

"Certainly. Of Miss Lamb, the distinguished novelist. If I am not too proud to accept such an invitation from a lady, why should you be? A new batch of four thousand is coming out for the holidays, and she wishes her collaborator—that is, myself—and her agent—that's you, Dick—to regard the proceeds as their fair share of the plunder. She only stipulates that they shall enlarge their knowledge of the world, and especially of their own country, by taking the proposed journey, thus fitting themselves to"

This being sheer bosh I put a stop to it, and a lively discussion ensued. The outcome of it was the triumph of Determination over Common Sense, by means of arguments which might be wearisome if repeated. Only one fact can be of interest—the fact that John's assertion was correct, that we were actually in Col-

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 orado Springs within two weeks of the time of that conversation.

In justice to myself, I should add that I am not in the habit of travelling about at my friends' expense, but that seeing how much John's heart was set upon my going with him—for he thinks more of me than one would suppose at the first blush, and I knew he would rather have me along than any one else, and that it would be rather slow music to go alone—considering that, I say, and that I should feel just as he did if the positions were reversed, and that he really was uncommonly flush just then (what a snarl a fellow gets into, by the way, when he talks apologetically!), I thought I might as well go, if only to keep him in countenance. I must also confess that I shared his interest in Miss Lamb so far as to feel that Pike's Peak dwindled to a mere nothing in comparison.

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RECENSION OF THE MAHAI3HARATA 203 The glimpses which the Mahabharata every now and again affords us of the worship ot Surya, or the sun, would suggest this rather as a royal than as a popular devotion. And the hypothesis is more or less borne out by the traces of his worship which remain in various parts of India. In Kashmir, in Orissa, and here and there in unexpected places, we meet with architectural and sculptural remains of it. But amongst the people it seems to have left few or no traces. Surya is counted academically amongst the Five Manifestations of the Supreme Being according to Hinduism, but devotionally, of what account is He?

These are questions that call for study and reply. Personally I believe that as our understanding of India progresses, we shall more and more be led to recognise the importance of place and history in accounting for those differentiations which certain common ideas have gradually undergone. It has not been opposition of opinion, but mere diversity of situation, which has been the source of the existing variety of sects and schools.


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T was a glorious morning early in December when we arrived in Colorado Springs. In fact we never saw anything but glorious weather during our stay. We got there in the morning, and had a solemn consultation as to whether we had better present ourselves at Miss Lamb's door before or after luncheon. We learned that Mrs. Ellerton's house was only a few blocks distant from our hotel, and having fixed upon twelve o'clock as the latest

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 hour for which we could possibly wait, we seated ourselves upon the hotel piazza and endeavored to appreciate Pike's Peak. It did not seem to us very high, and it did seem uncommonly ugly, in spite of its nightcap of snow. But we looked at it hard for an hour, and then we started up Cascade Avenue in search of the house which was, properly speaking, the goal of our two-thousand-mile pilgrimage. Miss Lamb not having been warned of our approach, John had written a sort of note of introduction in that exaggerated hand which he had adopted in all his correspondence for some months past.

We found the house without difficulty, but we did not find the ladies. Mrs. Ellerton was "not at home," and Miss Lamb was out riding. We left the note and our cards, and turned away very much chagrined. I think we both had confidently expected to see Miss Lamb open the door to us herself, holding a half-finished sonnet in her left hand.

"What idiots we were," said John.

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 "Why idiots?" I asked.

"Never to have thought of her not being at home."

"Speak for yourself," said I.

At that moment a young woman on horseback cantered past.

"That girl rides well," I exclaimed.

"That's she," said John, and he turned abruptly round to watch her, regardless of manners.

"How do you know it is she?"

"That is the way she would ride."

"She does not look like the author of those melancholy ditties," I objected.

"No, but she looks like the author of the jubilant ones."

We were walking slowly back, and John was much elated at his own penetration when the lady stopped in front of the house we had just left, sprang lightly to the ground, patted her horse's nose, hitched him to the post, and went into the house. We were not quite a block away, so that we could see every movement plainly, though the face was not discernible.

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 "She walks as well as she does everything else," said John.

"Have you ever heard her play the piano?" I asked, satirically.

"I have an idea that she doesn't play the piano," he replied, with perfect seriousness.

We were absurdly disappointed. Here we were in Colorado, and all we had got for our pains thus far was Pike's Peak. John swore he had never seen anything half so hideous, and I quite agreed with him.

As we came out from luncheon the bell-boy handed Brunt a note. John's face flushed up as he broke the seal.

"She invites us both to dinner in the name of her aunt, at half-past six this evening," he announced with a delighted grin.

"She's a trump," said I.

We went for a ride ourselves that afternoon, out onto the plains John said he wanted to get away from Pike's Peak. But when we turned to come back something had happened.

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 "By Jove!" we both cried in a breath, "look at that."

There was Pike's Peak apparently about fifty thousand feet high, with the sun just disappearing behind him, while to the southward another great mountain stood out, warm and mellow with the bloom of a damson plum upon it, and farther south yet, in the dim distance, there was a ghostly glimmering range of snow mountains that we had not seen before. To the northward all the hills were a sort of navy-blue.

One thing I had determined not to do, was to give any descriptions of scenery, mainly because I don't know how. But, upon my word, the bare facts of that sight were miles ahead of any description. The horses, too, had suddenly waked up, and bounded over the plain at a great rate. They kept abreast of each other in good shape, and the gait was so easy and so swift that we felt as though we were in a ship at sea.

Suddenly John cried: "I say, Dick,

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 let's yell! One, two, three!" and at the word we lifted up our two voices and shouted like wild Indians. Some cows chewing gravel on a little elevation that we happened to be passing—for they have nothing else to chew at that season—lifted their horned heads against the sky and gazed at us reproachfully, and a couple of prairie-dogs scampered across the plain and popped into their holes; but our unechoed shout reached no other ears, and we cantered on, much relieved by it.

It was dark before we got back, anda young moon appeared, tilting over the black shoulder of Pike's Peak, south of the nightcap. We and the horses calmed down and came in quite cool.

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N hour later, having hung up our overcoats in Mrs. Ellerton's hall, we turned to see two figures coming through the portières, and while the elder lady greeted me without venturing a guess as to which of us was which, Miss Lamb met John with extended hand, saying very warmly: "You are Mr. Brunt, I am sure."

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 I thought it an unfair discrimination though it was accidentally correct. John, to be sure, is bigger than I, but why should a big man be any more likely than one of more modest proportions to be a literary light? The worst of it was that John, when I sounded him later, would not own to having felt flattered. He seemed to take it for granted that she should know him at sight—quite as though he had been labelled "distinguished author." But she was very nice to me too, and we both felt at home immediately. John took the aunt in to dinner and I the niece, but it really made no difference, as there were only four of us.

This would be the moment to describe the two ladies if descriptions were in my line. Mrs. Ellerton, I thought, would have been a trifle commonplace if she had not been so perfectly well-bred; but perfect breeding is perhaps too unusual to leave its possessor quite without distinction.

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 Miss Lamb, with the black hair and blue eyes she had described, was not an out-and-out beauty, and yet I thought her uncommonly good-looking. John said, afterward, that she had frank eyes and a reserved mouth, and that that was why he liked her. I was amused at his definiteness, for I privately believed that, with his preconceived ideas, a frank mouth and reserved eyes would have pleased him just as well. What I liked about her was her self-possession and her cordiality. You felt her good-breeding, while there was that in her manner which made you think that she thought as much of you as she did of herself. But all this splitting of hairs is not in my line, and I will endeavor to confine myself to facts,—one of which is that Miss Lamb had long black eyelashes, which were highly becoming to the blue eyes.

John's visit, thanks to Mrs. Ellerton, was not wholly untroubled by embarrassment, and I wish I could describe his face when that good lady said to him:

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 "Do tell us, Mr. Brunt, something about Miss Lamb."

"Miss Lamb that isn't," her niece explained. "Itis not fair, Mr. Brunt, to put your discretion to such a test."

"Thank you," Brunt answered gratefully. "Mr. Dickson and I are in rather a difficult position."

"Not at all," said I, cheerfully, thinking that the situation was worth working up. "We shall be happy to tell you anything about Miss Lamb which does not involve her identity. What would you like to know?"

"Oh, everything," said Mrs. Ellerton, hospitably. "Was Spoils her first novel?

"Yes."

"Remarkable young woman! And is she delighted with her success?"

"There can be no doubt of that."

"How old a woman is she?"

"About thirty-five."

"Come, Dick, do you think that's quite fair?" John remonstrated.

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 "Why not?" said I, airily. The age wont identify her. There are plenty of women of thirty-five."

"Is she handsome?" asked Miss Lamb, with a smile. She was evidently amused at John's discomfiture.

"That is a question for you to answer, John," said I. "You're a better judge than I."

But instead of embarrassing him, this bold-faced attack on my part seemed to put John on his mettle, and he answered composedly: "She is very beautiful."

"Dark or fair?" asked Miss Lamb.

"A delicate blonde," John replied, with a perfectly straight face. "She has dreamy dark eyes but her skin is fair as a lily, and her hair is of that exquisite gold which seldom lasts into middle life. I have known her for years, and it seems to me she is as absolutely beautiful as she was when she was a girl."

"Very unlike one's idea of a middle-aged authoress," Mrs. Ellerton remarked; while Miss Lamb gave John a furtively

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 penetrating look. An inscrutable smile played about her lips. She clearly fancied that Mr. Brunt was betraying a deeper interest in the "delicate blonde" than he intended.

"Exactly," said John, in answer to Mrs. Ellerton's remark. "That is doubtless one reason why she has been so successful in maintaining her incognito."

"Is she of good family?" queried the genealogical aunt.

"I do not know much about her antecedents. She lives with an invalided father to whom she has devoted her life."

"Is she unmarried?" Mrs. Ellerton asked, with growing interest.

"Yes," said I, not wishing to be wholly left out of the conversation.

"She is much sought," Brunt answered. "Mr. Dickson, for instance, worships the ground she walks on. In fact, we are all more or less her slaves."

"John," said I, with emphasis, "I question whether my esteem for her is equal to yours."

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 "Possibly not," he admitted; "I only said that you adored her."

"And does any one besides yourselves suspect the authorship?" asked Miss Lamb.

"No," John answered. "Even her father is in ignorance of it. In fact," he went on, giving rein to his inventiveness, "it is out of consideration to him that she keeps the secret. Hehasa morbid horror of female celebrities. You could hardly deal him a more cruel blow than to tell him that it is his daughter who has written the book which is making such a stir."

"An aristocratic trait I am sure," said Mrs. Ellerton, complacently. "My father would have had the same feeling."

"Mine wouldn't have," said her niece. "I am sure, from what I remember of him, that papa would have been perfectly delighted with a talented daughter."

"My poor brother was very Western, you know," Mrs. Ellerton sighed. "Copper is so levelling," she added, turning to me for sympathy.

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 I have not mentioned it before, but I am said to have rather an aristocratic turn of countenance; a thing which probably invited the confidence of the genealogical aunt. I should, of course, prefer to be like Brunt, rugged and imposing, but if one must be on a smaller scale, one likes to have the qualities of one's defects.

By this time I, for one, was quite in a daze. But I reflected that the best thing I could do was to try and believe in the mythical Miss Lamb John had so vividly depicted, and I think it was this distinct image in my mind which kept me from making a mess of the secret on several subsequent occasions.

Meanwhile it seemed a pity to let slip so good an opportunity of getting a little information ourselves, so I presently said: "I wish, Mrs. Ellerton, you would reciprocate by telling us something about Leslie Smith the coming poet."

"I only wish I could," said Mrs. Ellerton, "but Ireally haven't the least idea who she is. Lilian is so secret about it

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 that I begin to suspect her of having written the poems herself, and to regret that I did not persevere in my attempt to read them all."

Miss Lamb listened without a shadow of self-consciousness, and said: "Don't be alarmed, Aunt Bessie. You will never have to blush over the discovery of a genius under your own roof."

We both pondered that speech and we both fitted it in our own minds with the same adjective; namely, enigmatical.

I was proud of John that evening. His little fiction about the other Miss Lamb seemed to have an exhilarating effect upon him, and I had never seen him more entertaining. Miss Lamb must have been interested, though she evinced her good breeding by showing me quite as much attention as she did John. Outwardly, indeed, I came out rather ahead, for while Miss Lamb's good manners led her to conceal the preference she must have felt for John, the aunt, with less tact, treated me with a marked con-

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 sideration which John did not share. Perhaps that was why I liked Mrs. Ellerton better than John did. You can't very well help liking folks who like you, especially when they seem to be rather superior, critical sort of people. And when she offered us Nestor cigarettes in the parlor, even John softened and discovered, as he afterward admitted, that "the genealogical fiend" was not quite without humanity.

There was an open wood fire in the parlor and a generally homelike air which we footsore travellers found much to our taste.

"How Eastern it seems!" said I to Miss Lamb, as we lighted our cigarettes.

"Dick doesn't mean Oriental," John put in. "It is the Atlantic seaboard that he has in mind."

"It does seem like home," I maintained.

"We are so glad to hear you say so," said Miss Lamb. "We like, of all things, to hear any praise of our own hired house."

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 "It seems like our own house," Mrs. Ellerton added comfortably. "It is so full of our own things. We have lived here four years. I am sure I don't know why we don't go away."

"But I know why," said her niece. "It is because we have a genealogical neighbor next door."

"And you?" asked Brunt.

"I? oh! I can't leave Cheyenne Cañon,—to say nothing of Aunt Bessie. And I am afraid a change of climate might not agree with Tiger."

"Tiger is?"

"My horse. His real name is Tiger-eye. When you see the gloss on his neck you will know how he came by the name. Tiger has never been lower down in the world than six thousand feet above sea-level. And, besides, he is very fond of the Cañon and of the Mesa. Do you like it?" she asked, abruptly.

"We hated it this morning," said John.

"I am glad of that. Every real Coloradoan hates it at first."

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 "But we didn't hate it long," I explained. "It was magnificent this afternoon, riding over the plains."

"Over the plains!" she cried. "And not over the Mesa! What remarkable tourists you are! How did you escape going first to the Garden of the Gods?"

"They told us we ought to, and so John wouldn't."

"I admire you. You are the great unprecedented."

"As a reward, we might take you through the Garden of the Gods to-morrow," said Mrs. Ellerton.

"Or as a punishment," her niece amended. "They would much prefer to ride or walk."

We protested, and the drive was arranged.

"Well," said I, as we closed the gate behind us—

"Well!" said John—

"Pike's Peak improves on acquaintance."

"Pike's Peak is great!"

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 And John lighted a cigar and nodded approvingly at the enormous hump of a mountain. The nightcap looked very pretty in the starlight.

I waited for, John to say something more, for I wished the expression of his views to be quite spontaneous. But he did not seem to feel communicative, and I had to begin.

"How about the cynicism, Jack?" said I, at last.

"It isn't visible to the naked eye."

"And the poems. Do you believe she wrote them?"

"She doesn't look it. But it is difficult to judge. What do you think about it, Dick?"

"Women are deep," said I, thinking it best to be non-committal.

We discussed the question off and on as we walked up to the north end of the town and back, but we did not get much enlightenment. It was clear which way our wishes went. John did not wish her to have written the poems, while I did.

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 I was charmed with the idea of conversing with an agreeable young lady, who was apparently in the best of spirits, and of being at the same time aware that she was the prey to despair. There had been moments during the evening when I was almost able to fancy that I could hear the "worm i' the bud"; but while Miss Lamb's cheek was not exactly damask, it did not, on the other hand, look as though it had furnished many repasts. It was merely a very sound and normal specimen of its kind. All the better. It was, perhaps—nay, probably—a mask, behind which lurked who could say what chagrins and disenchantments. In our future intercourse with Miss Lamb I was eagerly on the look-out for signs of hidden anguish, while John was searching for proofs that she did not write poetry. It may as well be confessed that one of us was not much more successful than the other; that there was nothing in her appearance or behavior to make Miss Lamb seem other than rather a finished

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 young woman of the world, with mind enough to have written good verses if Nature had given her the bent, and balance enough to keep her own counsel on any and every subject.

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OW that I have once begun describing things, I find I have quite a taste for it, and I should like nothing better than to try my hand on the Garden of the Gods. How the huge red "Gateway" appears as you drive across the Mesa,—in fact the Mesa itself, that splendid natural boulevard away up in the air, with the plains below on the one hand, and the mountains rising up on the other, and the silvery line of leafless cotton-

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 woods, running like a brook from the entrance to Glen Eyrie along the road to the Gateway. But what I should like best would be to describe the Gateway itself, made of two thundering great red rocks standing up on end, with Pike's Peak looming in fine style beyond, and a delicious blue sky overhead. We liked it better than we had meant to, for, as John said, it was undeniably theatrical, and it ought not to appeal to a refined taste. But Miss Lamb said she hated a refined taste, and Mrs. Ellerton remarked that she couldn't see anything exactly unrefined about the Garden, though she often wished the rocks were of a quieter color.

"O Aunt Bessie!" Miss Lamb cried, "you don't know what you are saying! It is the color that makes Colorado so adorable. I am sure that when we go East we shall find green quite tame by comparison."

"Oh! I wouldn't have the rocks green," Mrs. Ellerton replied, with a gleam of

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 humor. "Only sometimes when the sun strikes them they seem to glare at one."

Before going through the Gateway we drove to the northern end of the massive wall of rocks and stopped in the shadow. They call the view there, where only the narrow upright end is visible, the Tower of Babel; but, as John said, it looked more like the prow ofa great ship bearing down upon us.

"That is what I always think of," said Miss Lamb. "I sometimes feel quite afraid to stand here in the shadow. It seems as though it must come rushing upon one, or topple over from the shock of arrested motion. In the summer, when it doesn't cast a shadow just here, you don't have at allthe same impression. I never come here in summer."

"Then you enjoy the feeling of imminent destruction?" John asked.

"I like power," she answered.

"Then," thought I to myself, "you are pretty sure to like John, for he is power personified."

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 Mrs. Ellerton and I, meanwhile, talked plain English on the back seat.

"I never before knew Lilian to let any one else drive," Mrs. Ellerton observed. "She is not usually happy unless she holds the reins."

I hoped John did not hear this remark, for I thought it would make him conceited. But Miss Lamb must have heard it, for she immediately turned to John and asked: "Does the make-believe Miss Lamb like to drive?

"She never gives up the reins," John replied.

"Does she drive well?"

"She thinks she does."

"And you?"

"I think she does too."

"Is there anything she does not do well?" asked Mrs. Ellerton.

"According to John, I don't believe there is," I answered.

"There are a good many things she does not do at all," said John.

"What are they?" queried Miss Lamb.

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 "Oh, all sorts of womanly accomplishments. Needle-work and piano playing and sketching in water colors."

"She writes a very good note."

"Do you claim that as a womanly accomplishment?"

"Not exclusively. But it is an accomplishment of hers."

Everything seemed to conspire to tickle John's vanity.

"The critics think she has an 'almost masculine power, I observed, casually. "Do you see anything of that in her letters?"

"Oh, no! Her letters are extremely lady-like. Don't you think so, Aunt Bessie?"

"I beg your pardon," said Aunt Bessie. "I am afraid I was not listening. I was trying to make out whether that rock was Ben. Butler or the Irish Emigrant."

"It is too good a rock for either," her niece protested. "Isn't it a shame," she continued, turning to me, "to call these splendid rocks names!"

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 Miss Lamb always had a very kind way of referring things to me, but I did not deceive myself for a moment.

"Speaking of names," I said, "what a pity that Pike's Peak could not have been called something else."

"Yes," said John. "Aside from its ugliness, it is absurd to call a great round dome like that by such a spikèd name."

"We thought so, too, at first," said Miss Lamb. "We decided it ought to be called the 'Manitou.' That would have been both sonorous and significant. But after a while we got to like Pike's Peak, perhaps because it was so grotesquely inappropriate, and when our Swedish parlor-maid called it 'the Pike,' we felt that that could not be improved upon, and 'the Pike' it has remained in our vocabulary."

Undeniably Miss Lamb had humor. But then, so had Leslie Smith. Some of the poems were as sparkling as others were lugubrious. They were evidently the work of a many-sided genius. It

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 was perplexing and it was ludicrous too, I must admit. The young lady was so unconscious of the scrutiny she was undergoing, and she made her little remarks so totally unaware of the way they were being twisted and turned by two inquiring minds! I do not think, however, that John listened in the same spirit of investigation that animated me. Occasionally some chance word of hers may have aroused his suspicions. It was probably in a spirit of speculation that he suddenly asked Miss Lamb if she remembered Leslie Smith's poem comparing Colorado to Egypt.

"Yes, indeed," she said; "I remember it perfectly. The resemblance is very striking."

"Were you ever in Egypt?" I asked.

"Yes, I went there with my uncle and aunt before we came to Colorado. We were all impressed by the similarity in climate and general aspect when we came here."

How coolly she said it! Yes, women are deep.

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 But while John may have found food for reflection in such coincidences and suggestions, I think that, as a rule, when in Miss Lamb's society, he was too much occupied with her as she chanced to reveal herself, to revert to any surmises as to her concealments.

We had driven the length of the "Garden," and were passing out by what Miss Lamb called the "Back Gate," a passage between two huge boulders, one of which is quite the conventional balance rock, excepting that it is brick-red. After that, there was no scenery to speak of (for we turned our backs to the mountains) until, as we returned over the lower Mesa, we got a broad view of the plains to the eastward. The vast, undulating expanse, streaked with mysterious currents of light, looked wonderfully like the sea, with the bluffs or "buttes" rising here and there like rock-bound islands, and the smoke from a distant railway train simulating an out-going steamer.

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 "To return to the ever interesting author of Spoils," said Miss Lamb, as we crossed the bridge over the totally dry bed of the Monument River. "Do you not think Miss Lamb's handwriting very like a man's?"

"Oh, all literary people write alike," I made haste to say. "I wish you could see Mrs. Raynor's handwriting. It is so like Brunt's that you could scarcely tell them apart."

This was pure fiction, but the moment was critical.

"I think you must be right," Miss Lamb replied. "Do you know, I find Mr. Brunt's hand and Miss Lamb's of exactly the same character. His is naturally a little larger and bolder, but there is exactly the same turn in both."

"I have noticed it myself," said Brunt, imperturbably. "It is really singular that two people of such different temperament should write so much alike. It is enough to refute all theories as to the

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 significance of the handwriting in character-reading."

"Have you heard from Miss Lamb recently?" Mrs. Ellerton asked.

"Dickson hears from her oftener than I do," was John's reply. "What was your last news, Dick?"

"My last news of her," said I, promptly, "was that she thought no beings so enviable as those who were in Colorado. She inquired very particularly for you, Miss Lamb, and said she wished she might hear from you again. She said you were too chary of your letters."

"She is very kind, I am sure," said Miss Lamb, a little coolly I thought, "but I should be sorry to encroach upon her time without even a poor pretext."

"I should think your time and attention were to be considered also," said John. "Believe me, Miss Lamb, you get the best of authors in their books. It does not often pay to correspond with them."

"What heresy!" cried I. "You are


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 areal dog in the manger, Jack. You know there is no one whose letters you enjoy as you do those of the author of Spoils."

"Perhaps I have a pretext for writing," said Miss Lamb, relenting. "She would be interested to hear my account of your visit. Do you really think it would not be a bore to her if I were to write?"

As I assured her of the pleasure it must give, especially with such subjects as ourselves to expatiate upon, we drove up before Mrs. Ellerton's door, and John, handing Miss Lamb from the buckboard, said: "When are we to have a business talk?"

"Whenever you will be so kind as to come and see me," she replied, graciously.

"May I come this afternoon?"

"Pray do. I am sure I could not wait much longer before talking over our book."

"Dick," said John, as we drove down the avenue, "I did not know you were such an unconscionable villain."


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neighbouring chapels and stole Bibles and hymn-books, with which in their pockets and under their arms they joined the host in Heaven's Courtyard, whence they went into the Waiting Chamber that is without the Judgment Hall.

"Boy bach, a lot of Books of the Word he has," a woman remarked to the Respected Towy-Watkins. "Say him I have one."

"Happy would I be to do like that," was the reply. "But, female, much does the Large One regard His speeches. What is the text on the wall? 'Prepare your deeds for the Lord.' The Beybile is the most religious deed. Farewell for now," and he pretended to go away.

Holding the sleeve of his White Shirt, the woman separated her toothless gums and fashioned her wrinkled face in grief. "Two tens he has," she croaked. "And his shirt is clean. Dirty am I; buried I was as I was found, and the shovellers


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 "I did not know it myself, dear boy!" said I, without looking at him. I did not particularly care to see the expression of his face. But I went on, callously: "I don't know when—I have been so pleased with myself. Couldn't you make use of my character in your next work of fiction? 'The Traitor Confidant' would be a capital title, and I shall take great pleasure in furnishing more 'copy' for the character."

"But, Dick, don't you see what a shabby trick you have played upon Miss Lamb?"

"Of course I do. That is where the villainy comes in. And won't it be nuts when the letter arrives!"


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HAT afternoon, as John and I were smoking on the hotel piazza, who should turn up but Ned Randall. We used to see a good deal of Ned at the Pow-wow and elsewhere, but after he went West we lost track of him. It was mighty pleasant to run across him in this way, and when he said there was tennis to be had at the Club grounds, and proposed our going up, I thought I had never liked him so well. As for John, he declined the invitation on the score of a previous engagement so cheerfully that I was disgusted with him.

"Can't you cut your engagement?" Ned urged. "We've got some pretty good players up there."


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 "I should like to have a whack at them some other time," John said, "but I can't come this afternoon."

"All right," said Ned. "We have tennis all the year round in Colorado, so you are not likely to lose your chance."

"What are you going in for out here, Ned?" I asked, as we walked up the avenue.

"Tennis and real-estate."

"Which do you make the most money at?"

"Not at tennis," said he. "I own some pretty good property out here. That, for instance," he added, as we passed Mrs. Ellerton's gate.

"The deuce you do!" said I, with undisguised astonishment. In old times Ned did not enjoy the reputation of being a financial genius. "How did you do it?"

"I didn't do it. The town did it. It has been growing like a mushroom ever since I came out, five years ago, and I had the luck to chip in just in time."

"You know Miss Lamb then."


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 "Of course I do. But how did you come to know her? She is a Connecticut girl to begin with, and she hasn't lived in the East since she left school."

"I wonder what makes them stay on here?" I queried, after having explained our acquaintance after a fashion. "Mr. Ellerton died here, did he not? I should think the associations might be painful."

"I don't think Mrs. Ellerton is enterprising enough to go away. All the enterprise she possesses goes into genealogy. And by the way, Dick, you had better look out how you let her know that you are a Rhode Island Dickson. If once she gets hold of that fact you will wish you had been born a 'mick.

Ned does not belong to the swell Randall family. I suppose he had been forced to confess as much in response to Mrs. Ellerton's investigations. Perhaps that was why he spoke with such asperity.

"Nice girl, Miss Lamb seems to be," said I, tentatively.


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 "Nice girl! Irather guess! I never saw any one nicer. I say, Dick, neither of you fellows are going to carry her off, I hope."

"Not that I know of. But I should think there might have been plenty to try for it before now."

"Might have been. Only I don't believe any one ever screwed up his courage to ask her. I never did!"—this with a profound sigh.

"Is she so stiff?" I asked, ignoring the implied confidence.

"Not so much stiff as—" he paused for the word,—"let us say lucid. A fellow would have to be a bigger fool than I am to imagine that he had a chance."

"And you don't think she ever cared for anybody?"

"Well, of course I can't say. There hasn't been any one out here that she would be likely to fancy, and she was a mere chicken when she came. Why do you ask?"

"I was only trying to get some clue to her lucidity. It isn't so common."


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 At this moment our arrival at the Club grounds put an end to confidences.

I have sometimes wished that people were not so inclined to make a confidant of me. They arealways telling me their love affairs. Yet perhaps it is a safeguard. For just as soon as I make the acquaintance of a nice girl some fellow is sure to tell me, under the seal of secrecy, that he adores her, so that my own feelings don't get a chance to spring up. But, as I say, that is perhaps just as well, for I am not a marrying man, and it might be awkward to get stirred up over somebody for nothing. Though possibly if I happened to like a girl as much as all that comes to, my views might change. That however wouldn't fill the exchequer. If I had come out West to be sure, as Ned wanted me to, I might have owned houses and things too. But I think, on the whole, I prefer New York, and as long as a few of the Pow-wow escape the ravages of matrimony, life must still be pleasant.

I was interested in Ned's confessions,


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 fragmentary as they were. I rather hoped he would tell me some more sometime. I never pry into other people's affairs however, but John says that is the very reason they all want to tell me their secrets. John has noticed it, and he once said some very kind things about it. John is such a good fellow! He would give the very Devil his dues!

The tennis was pretty fair, though Ned started me off with some young ladies and so I didn't go it quite so hard as I should have liked to.

When I got home I found John reading a New York paper in the office.

"How was the business talk?" I asked, as we stepped out into the deserted piazza. It was the dark end of twilight, and a few scattered stars were pricking through.

"First rate," said he.

"Did you get any light on the great subject?"

"Not a ray."

"Did you discuss the poems?


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 "Some of them."

"What did she have to say about the sonnets of Constance?"

"Nothing."

"Didn't they come up?"

"No. She didn't mention them, and I hadn't the cheek."

"Oh, I say, Jack; you might have got something out of her. Couldn't you tell whether she took your observations in a personal spirit? Women are always so personal, don't you know? Atleast that is what you literary fellows say about them, though I don't myself see how they could be much more personal than the rest of us! But come, now, you're an observer of human nature. Couldn't you detect 'the personal element'?"

"Stuff, Dick! of course it was personal to her! Whether she wrote the poems or not, their publication is all her doing. I wish you could have seen her face, though, when I told her that Nelson Guild liked the poems and was going to notice them."


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 "How did it look?"

He pointed to a bouncing great planet that was shining away in the west.

"It looked like that star," said he.

I ventured to quote in a sentimental tone. He did not object to the amendment and I wished I had not said it.

As I look back upon that time the situation seems to me more than ever preposterous. For two grown men to leave New York in the height of the season and travel two thousand miles, merely for the sake of giving one of them an opportunity to fall in love with a girl neither of them had ever seen, and one who, unless all signs failed, was already the unfortunate possessor ofa broken heart! But geniuses are erratic, and if you allow yourself to get entangled with a genius you never know what you may be led into.

Yet I may as well say, right here, that I, for my part, had a rousing good time of it, with tennis and riding, and lots of nice


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 people, and weather fit for a king. One scarcely missed the Pow-wow and the German opera, and as for clients, one forgot that one had so few to forget.


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HE next morning Brunt went off to the tennis court with some fellows he knew, while I started up Pike's Peak Avenue on a shopping expedition in search of a birthday present for my sister May. If I were the hero of this story I should not confess how fond I am of shopping, but, as it is, there can be no harm in owning that I spent a good two hours among the Chinese bric-a-brac and Indian and Mexican curiosities displayed in the shops. I soon lighted upon a pretty trifle for May, but meanwhile I had come across a couple of Navajo


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 blankets and some skins that were not to be so easily disposed of. Not that I had any hundred-dollar bills to squander on such things, and it was the hundred-dollar ones which invariably took my fancy; but they were spread out invitingly and one could enjoy them without incommoding anybody. What took my eye most of all was a royal Bengal tiger skin, with head and paws finely mounted, which an enterprising furrier had imported on speculation. He was a splendid fellow—the tiger, I mean,—magnificently striped. He must have been the lord of his jungle, and the more I looked at him, the more I wanted him to belong to John. I could not conveniently purchase him with my unaided resources, but it struck me that if ever an occasion should arise for the Pow-wow to make John a present, this would be the fellow to choose.

Finding it was getting on toward noon, I took leave of his feline majesty, and strolled up the avenue toward the tennis


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 ground. Though the thermometer had spent the night burrowing down well below zero, it had arrived at less inhuman regions early in the morning, and now, at noon, the sun was so strong, that I was not surprised to see Mrs. Ellerton, well wrapped up, sitting in a steamer chair on her south piazza. It looked very pleasant there, and thinking that the tennis would be about over, I took the opportunity to make my party call.

"This is very good of you, Mr. Dickson," said the lady, coming forward, with a pleasant air of welcome, which reminded me of her niece. There is a strong family resemblance, in spite of their unlikeness.

"Lilian has not come in from riding, and I am quite too lazy to do anything but sit in the sun and be glad of pleasant company."

"Thanks," I said, taking a chair. "How surprisingly warm the sun is."

I should not report such very commonplace observations, only I fancy they


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 give an air of naturalness to the story, and besides, if I were to confine myself exclusively to picked conversations, it would be making us out more brilliant than we were.

"Your niece is very fond of riding?" I went on, in the same vein.

"Oh, very! I was, myself, at her age, though I never had her fancy for riding alone. She says she does not often find any one who is as good company as Tiger."

"Ah ha," thought I to myself. "Your niece is communing with the Muse, O unsuspecting aunt!"

"Hasn't she a dog?" I asked—audibly.

"No, and it is a great pity, for she is fond of dogs. She lost a beautiful Irish setter last year—poor Cop! (short for Copper). He was kicked by a vicious horse. It was a most distressing thing. We had just come in from driving, when the accident occurred. It was beginning to rain a little. Dear old Cop had been so happy, running on ahead of us, and scampering


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 about the fields after prairie-dogs which he never caught. I remember that very day, Lilian said that she did believe that Cop knew as much as grown folks! It was a passing horse that did it. Poor Cop was flung to one side of the road, in a dreadful condition, and there he lay, moaning like a child. Lilian was beside him in an instant. We saw that he must die, and she would not have him moved. We laid the carriage rug over him to keep the rain off, and then she sat down beside him, in all the mud, and put her hand under his head, and he stopped moaning and licked her hand. Poor fellow! he died licking her hand."

I looked out upon the scene of the tragedy with much sympathy as Mrs. Ellerton rambled on.

"She won't have another dog, which is a pity. I wanted to give her one on her birthday, soon after, but she suspected my intention and begged me not to do so. He was a setter and quite as handsome as Cop—with even a better pedigree,—but