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350 administration, was compelled to add considerably to the burden of taxation, in order to assist in paying the debts of the Emperor already referred to. It is no wonder that this dreaded imperial representative and Patriarch appeared to later Coptic tradition to be the veritable Antichrist. Most of all he was blamed for surrendering Egypt to the Muslims. This Cyrus is in fact, if we are not greatly deceived, the actual personage from whom the main traits of the figure of the Muḳauḳis, so surrounded by legendary lore of Muslim tradition, are taken. The problem of the Muḳauḳis is one of the most difficult ones in the whole history of the conquest of Egypt, which is throughout studded with problems. To the Arabians the Muḳauḳis represents the ruler of Egypt, who concludes with them the capitulation treaties. This was however without doubt Cyrus, for numerous other isolated statements in the legend of the Muḳauḳis apply to him, although other historical personages appear to have been confused with him. The study of Coptic tradition first solved the problem in so far as it identified the Muḳauḳis unhesitatingly with Cyrus. Whether in this obscure name a Byzantine title, a nickname, or a designation of descent is hidden, must remain for the present unelucidated.

The conqueror of Egypt was 'Amr ibn al-'Āṣ, already known to us from the Syrian campaign, a man of great personal authority in the theocracy, but by no means a sanctimonious man, and perhaps less a great general, even if he gained his laurels, than an excellent organiser and a Machiavellian politician, with strong traces of heathenism and of genuine Arabian egotism. In December 639 'Amr appeared on the eastern boundary, at that time rather denuded of troops, and about a month later conquered Pelusium (Jan. 640) with only 3-4000 men. 'Amr was unable to venture on a decisive battle until reinforcements to the number of about 5000 had joined him under the leadership of Zubair, the celebrated companion of the prophet. With these he defeated the Byzantines, commanded by the Augustalis Theodorus, in the battle of Heliopolis (July 640), this being followed up quickly by the occupation of one of the suburbs of Babylon, not far distant from the Cairo of to-day. Babylon was not the capital of Egypt, it is true, but owing to its commanding position at the head of the delta leading towards Alexandria it was the most important position in the country, and was correspondingly well fortified. The citadel of Babylon held out accordingly for a considerable time still. Cyrus, who appears to have been besieged there, entered into negotiation with 'Amr, in spite of rather strong opposition to this course in his own camp, and then quitted Egypt to obtain from the Emperor a ratification of the provisional treaty agreed upon with 'Amr. Heraclius was incensed to the utmost; and Cyrus was accused of treachery and banished. Shortly afterwards (11 Feb. 641), the Emperor died. The relief of Babylon now appeared impossible: even before this the most pernicious intrigues with the Muslims had been carried on in Egypt, and


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130 "We ought to beat her—she'll get too uppity to live with," declared Bobby, discussing these games.

"It will do us good to be beaten occasionally," laughed Laura. "You begin to think, Bobby, that you must belong to the winning side all the time."

"Yes. Who doesn't?" sniffed Miss Hargrew. "It's all right—all this talk about playing the game for the game's sake; but right down in the bottom of our hearts, don't all of us play to win? If we don't, we never play well, that's as sure as shooting."

When the school re-opened, however, on the first Monday in January, the subject uppermost in the minds of the girls of Central High was the prize contest in play-writing for the M. O. R's. The girls crowded into Assembly that morning, all on the qui vive to hear what the principal would have to say.

But after the opening exercises, when Mr. Sharp came forward to speak, he surprised everybody by saying:

"We are not ready to report upon the matter of the plays. Mr. Monterey will confer with us at noon, and before school is dismissed to-day we will announce the winner.

"It is not often that a committe having in

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Rh charge the decision of the winner in an amateur play-writing competition has the happiness to be aided by a professional manager of a theater, and a man, too, who has produced plays of importance himself.

"Mr. Monterey's knowledge of what will act well will make our final decision, I believe, one that will strike all competitors as eminently fair. We have tried to decide upon the prize winner in a way that will satisfy the giver of the prize, too—Mrs. Kerrick. She demanded a play that would act well and that will draw an audience because of its dramatic value as a play—not merely because it is written by a girl of Central High, or is performed by the girls and their friends for the benefit of the M. O. R's.

"Before the day closes, I can promise you, the decision will be made and the name of the prize-winner, and of the title of the play, will be announced. You are excused to your lessons for the morning."

The buzz of excitement—especially from the girls' side—when Mr. Sharp had ceased speaking, could scarcely be controlled. Not even Miss Carrington's basilisk eye could quell it.

Of course, poor Bobby fell a victim to Gee Gee's sour temper. She thought the teacher had long since reached the class room, and she was


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132 gabbling away to Nell Agnew and Jess "sixteen to the dozen," as she would have said herself. When out of a door popped the bespectacled Miss Carrington, grimmer and more stern than usual.

"Indeed, Miss! are you supposed to rattle away like that about matters entirely foreign to your lessons, on the way to class room?" demanded the teacher.

"Oh, indeed, Miss Carrington," exclaimed the contrite Bobby (she always was contrite when caught in a fault, for all her sauciness and lightness arose from thoughtlessness) "I really forgot—I did not mean to make a noise in the corridor."

"Humph! did not mean—did not mean? What excuse is that, pray?"

"Not a very good one, I am afraid," admitted Bobby. "But I truly did not intend to break a rule. We were all so much interested in the play"

"Yes. Quite so. It is evident that I will get little out of you young ladies until the matter of this silly play is settled. I presume you are one of the contestants, Miss Clara?"

"Not at all, Miss Carrington," said Bobby, demurely. "I did start to write one. It—it would have been a tragedy based upon several


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641-643] now it was plainly to be seen that the death of the Emperor would fan into new life old passions — which in fact actually occurred. During the next few years the idea of any strong advance against the Saracens could not be entertained. Thus the citadel of Babylon capitulated in April 641. Therewith the eastern Delta and Upper Egypt lay in the hands of 'Amr. He thereupon crossed the Nile and, following the western branch of the river, advanced slowly towards Alexandria, capturing on his way the episcopal see of Nikiou, which capitulated on 13 May. Treachery and fear smoothed the way for him, but nevertheless he appears to have met with quite energetic opposition near Alexandria. He was, it is true, able to obtain possession temporarily of the vicinity of the town, but for the time being there could be no idea of subduing the great, strong Alexandria. As to the slow extension of the Muslim power in the remainder of Egypt we are not very well informed.

In the confusion following on the death of Heraclius the war party, represented as regards Egypt by the Augustalis Theodorus, appears to have gained the supremacy in Constantinople; then however, probably at the instigation of the Empress Martina, who was weary of the perpetual wars with the Saracens, Cyrus was again despatched to Egypt to arrange a capitulation with 'Amr under the most favourable conditions. Cyrus returned to Alexandria (14 Sept. 641) and his further policy is not quite clear. In any case, contrary to his former actions, he was most compliant to the Copts, and it is not improbable that he aimed at an Egyptian primacy under Arabian suzerainty. In the autumn, without the knowledge of the Alexandrians, he concluded the definite treaty with 'Amr, in accordance with which the city was to be evacuated by the Greeks not later than 17 Sept. 642, but for a stipulated tribute the residents were guaranteed their personal safety and the safety of their property, together with full freedom in the exercise of their religion. The Patriarch ran some risk of being lynched when this contract first became known, but he then appears to have convinced the people of its expediency. The Greeks quitted the town and it was actually given over to the Saracens at the appointed date. Cyrus did not live to see this, for he died previously (21 March 642). The capital of Egypt having fallen, 'Amr desired also to cover his flank; he therefore undertook in the following winter 642-643 an expedition to the Pentapolis and occupied Barka without striking a blow.

Alexandria was however no more selected as the seat of the new government than Ctesiphon had previously been chosen for this purpose. The policy of the Caliph was to isolate the Arabian element in the foreign land, and the Saracens therefore built for themselves a city of their own, near to the ancient Babylon, on the eastern bank of the Nile, in a similar way to their procedure at Kūfa and Baṣra; their camp was called by the Greeks "" i.e. "the camp," which name was transmuted in the Arabian idiom into "Fūsṭāṭ" (a tent). The list of


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Rh strong absorption-bands in this interval, among which those marked $\rho$, $\sigma$, $\tau$, and $$\phi$$ are the most prominent, and these absorption-bands belong most probably to the aqueous vapour, Thatvapour. That [sic] Paschen has not observed any emission by water-vapour, in this interval may very well be accounted for by the fact that his heat-spectrum had a very small intensity for these short-waved rays. But it may be conceded that the absorption-coefficient for aqueous vapour at this angle in is not very accurate (probably too great), in consequence of the little importance that Langley attached to the corresponding observations. After this occurs in Langley's spectrum the great absorption-band $$\psi$$ at the angle 39.45 ($\lambda=1.4~\mu$), where in Paschen's curve the emission first becomes sensible ($\log y=-0.1105$ in ). At wave-lengths of greater value we find according to Paschen strong absorption-bands at $$\lambda=1.83~\mu$$ ($\Omega$ in Langley's spectrum), i. e. in the neighbourhood of 39°.30 and at $\lambda=2.64~\mu$; (Langley's $\text{X}$) a little above the angle 39°.15. In accordance with this I have found rather large absorption-coefficients for aqueous vapour at these angles ($\log y=-0.0952$ and $$-0.0862$$ resp.). From $$\lambda=3.0~\mu$$ to $$\lambda=4.7~\mu$$ thereafter, according to Paschen the absorption is very small, in agreement with my calculation ($\log y=-0.0068$ at 39°, corresponding to $\lambda=4.3~\mu$). From this point the absorption increases again and presents new maxima at $\lambda=5.5~\mu$, $\lambda=6.6~\mu$, and $\lambda=7.7~\mu$, i. e. in the vicinity of the angles 38°.45 ($\lambda=5.6~\mu$) and 38°.30 ($\lambda=7.1~\mu$). In this region the absorption of the water-vapour is continuous over the whole interval, in consequence of which the great absorption-coefficient in this part ($\log y=-0.3114$ and $-0.2362$) becomes intelligible. In consequence of the decreasing intensity of the emission-spectrum of aqueous vapour in Paschen's curve we cannot pursue the details of it closely, but it seems as if the emission of the water-vapour would also be considerable at $$\lambda=8.7~\mu$$ (39°.15), which corresponds with the great absorption-coefficient ($\log y=-0.1983$) at this place. The observations of Paschen are not extended further, ending at $\lambda=9.5~\mu$, which corresponds to an angle of 39°.08.

For carbonic acid we find at first the value zero at 40°, in agreement with the figures of Paschen and Ångström. The absorption of carbonic acid first assumes a sensible value at


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Rh of the main incidents in the Punic Wars. But I found that to give the matter proper attention I should be obliged to neglect some of the studies, and"

"That will do, Miss Hargrew," interposed the teacher, severely. "You bring me on Friday afternoon a resume of those same Punic Wars—say a thousand words. I shall learn thereby just how much you know about the subject you selected for your play."

Perhaps Bobby deserved what she got; but she "pulled a dreadfully long face" about it, while the other girls were inclined to enjoy her chagrin.

As for Jess Morse, it seemed to her that the waiting for the announcement of the prize-winner was too hard a cross to bear. So much depended upon the decision of the committee—it did seem as though she could not keep her mind upon the lessons.

If she won—if she won!—there would be plain sailing in the domestic waters of the Morses' life—and that had come to mean a great deal to the girl. For even Mrs. Prentice's kindness to them had not cleared away all the troubles for Jess Morse.

True, the account at Mr. Closewick's had been paid. Jess, too, had seen to it that the month's


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134 rent for their new home was met and a little something paid each week on the running store accounts.

But when Mrs. Morse drew her salary for the last week from the Courier—and it amounted to nearly ten dollars that week—she had been obliged to pay the money over to her dressmaker. She had found it necessary to order a new costume, if she was to follow the fashionable receptions, and the like, on the Hill. This matter of her mother being a society reporter, Jess, feared, would cost them more in the end than it was worth to them.

And now they began the New Year with positively nothing in the family purse. And there was so much needed. There would be another reception at the M. O. R. house this very week and Jess told herself that she could not go because of her lack of a gown. Ah! these things were all veritable tragedies to her.

Lily Pendleton was very sure that she was going to take the prize. And she was not afraid to talk about it.

"Mother saw Mr. Monterey, and I am sure he was impressed by what she told him," she announced. "Why, when the New Century Club met at our house last week, I read two acts of my play, and all the ladies said it was fine."


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Rh "Aren't you modest!" grumbled Bobby. "I should think it would pain you."

"Now, don't you get saucy, Bobby," warned Lily. "You are not interested in this contest, that's sure."

"Huh!" cried Bobby. "I knew better than to try to write any such thing. If I won the prize nobody would believe that I wrote it."

"Oh, Bob," said Dora Lockwood. "You are too modest."

"Yes, sir—ree!" returned Bobby. "I know it. I am of the same modest and withdrawing nature as the turtle."

"The turtle?"

"Yep," said Bobby. "You know what the little boy said when he first went into the country? He came running to his father and says: 'Oh, Dad! what's this thing I found? When I poked it, it put its hands and feet in its pockets and swallowed its head!' Now, there can't be anything much more retiring than the turtle—or me."

The bell called them in for the final session then, and half an hour before closing time the signal from Mr. Sharp's office announced that the girls of all classes were to file to the Assembly hall and take their seats. On this occasion the boys were not present.


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none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the day-light, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station; it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly common-place, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly common-place people—and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.

The manner of my lighting on it was this.

I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of windowof the window [sic] at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn’t been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.

It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:

“I beg your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me?” For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.

The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:

“In you, sir?—B.”

“B, sir?” said I, growing warm.

“I have nothing to do with you, sir,” returned the gentleman; “pray let me listen—O.”

He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.

At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don’t believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.


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136 "If I don't get it I hope you do, Jess," whispered Laura Belding to her chum as they went to their seats.

But to herself Jess kept saying: "Oh, it would be too good to be true—too good to be true! It would be just like a story-book."

Mr. Sharp was smiling when he rose to speak.

"I must admit that I am surprised—happily surprised," he began. "Several of the plays submitted to the committee are really marked by a vigor of style and originality of text and plot that have delighted me. Particularly are 'The Strong Defense,' by Miss Belding, 'Appearances,' by Miss Hilyard, 'The Arrow's Flight,' by Miss Agnew and 'Harrowdale,' by Miss Buford to be praised upon these points.

"Of course, there were some handed in to the committee that were utterly unintelligible; the writers had not grasped the first principles of play-writing. But, as a whole, I am proud of your efforts, and I know Miss Gould is. I only fear that many of you young ladies who began plays did not finish them. It narrowed the choice down to a very few.

"And yet," pursued Mr. Sharp, "there was really little doubt in the minds of any of the committee at the first reading of the manuscripts. And when the plays considered, from a literary


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Rh standpoint, really acceptable, were put in the hands of Mr. Monterey for a final reading and judgment, we were assured that our opinion was correct.

"There is but one, among them all, that is a really actable (pardon the coining of the word), and that one, too, has in it the elements of a really heart-moving story. The author has failed in many of the professional rules of play-writing—even her grammar is somewhat shaky in spots," added Mr. Sharp, smiling suddenly. "But the story is so sweet and so moving, and is so well fitted to the acting capacity of you girls and your brothers, that there is not the shadow of a doubt as to the worth of the piece and the success of the writer."

For a moment he was silent. The girls were eager. Lily Pendleton preened herself in her seat. Her play had not been named when the principal gave lukewarm praise to those mentioned. She was sure that he now referred to her and to her play.

On the other hand, Jess Morse had lost all hope. Her poor little play was not even mentioned, as Chet would have said, "among the also rans!"

"I am glad to announce—and to congratulate the young lady at the same time," said Mr. Sharp,


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138 "that Miss Josephine Morse is the winner of the two hundred dollars offered by Mrs. Kerrick, the title of her play being 'The Spring Road.

It came like a thunderbolt! Jess could only gasp and stare up at him until his smiling, rosy face, and the big spectacles, were blurred in a mist that seemed to rise before her like a curtain.

Bobby Hargrew started the cheering; but it was Laura who reached Jess first and hugged her tight.

"I'm just as disappointed as I can be!" she cried. "I actually thought my play was going to be best. But as it wasn't Why, Jess, I'm almost as happy over your winning it as you can be yourself!"


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Column 1, paragraph 1, lines 5–6: should "day-/light" be "daylight" or "day-light"? -- Yodin T 17:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Column 1, paragraph 3, lines 7–8: should "mid-/night" be "midnight" or "mid-night"? -- Yodin T 17:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)


text: The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 16


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"I consider it a very unfair decision—unfair in every particular," proclaimed Lily Pendleton, after school. "Why, he did not even mention 'The Duchess of Dawnleigh.' I can't believe that Mr. Monterey even saw my play. I certainly shall make inquiries."

Bobby Hargrew was caustic. The Duchess of Dawnleigh! she repeated. "Say Lil! would you really know a live duchess if you saw one coming up the street? Why didn't you write about something you knew about?"

"I guess I know as much about duchesses as you do, Bobby Hargrew!"

"I hope so," granted Bobby, cheerily. "If I had to go up against a duchess—a real, live one—I expect I'd be like the little milliner in Boston, when some great, high-and-mighty personages came there from England. One of them was a sure-enough duchess, and she sent for the little milliner to do some work for her.


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140 "The little workwoman was just about scared into a conniption," chuckled Bobby, "when she found she had to go to the grand hotel to meet the grand lady and so asked a friend who knew a little more about the nobility than she did, what she should do when she entered the grand lady's presence.

Why, when you enter the room,' explained the friend, 'merely bow, and in speaking to her say "Your Grace.

"The little milliner," continued Bobby, "thought she could do that all right, and she went to the interview with the duchess without any dress rehearsal. When she got inside the lady's door she bowed very low and says, right off:

For what we are about to receive, Oh, Lord, make us truly grateful!

But while there may have been some disappointment in the hearts of some of the girls of Central High who had striven for the prize, they not yet having heard Jess Morse's play read, even the disappointed ones were not niggardly with their congratulations.

Jess walked in a maze that afternoon when she went home, Laura on one side and Nell Agnew on the other, while Bobby pirouetted around them like a very brilliant and revolving planet.


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Rh "And is there a part in your play for me?" demanded the irrepressible. "I just dote on actin. But no thinking part for mine, young lady! I must at least be important enough in the play to say: 'Me Lord! the carriage waits.

"You could play the part of Puck or Ariel, Bobby," declared Nellie Agnew.

"Hah! did you use those characters in 'The Arrow's Flight'?" gibed Bobby. "No wonder it was turned down then. Stealing boldly from Shakespeare!"

"No, I didn't, Miss!" returned Nell, rather sharply. "I hope you noticed that I was one of those who was 'honorably mentioned.

"Sure. Mr. Sharp let you all down easy," chortled Bobby.

"I believe the decision in the contest was eminently fair," declared Laura. "Yet I thought I would surely win."

"So did I," cried Nell.

"And I didn't even dare hope for it," said Jess, awe-stricken. "It's just the most wonderful thing that ever happened."

But Mrs. Morse took the success of "The Spring Road" quite as a matter of course.

"There, Josephine!" she exclaimed. "Now you can have the new clothes you are really suffering for"


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2 “You will excuse me,” said the gentleman, contemptuously, “if I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in spiritual intercourse.”

“Oh!” said I, something snappishly.

“The conferences of the night began,” continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, “with this message: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.

“Sound,” said I; “but, absolutely new?”

“New from spirits,” returned the gentleman.

I could only repeat my rather snappish “Oh!” and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication?

A bird in the hand, said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, is worth two in the Bosh.

“Truly I am of the same opinion,” said I; “but shouldn’t it be Bush?”

“It came to me, Bosh,” returned the gentleman.

The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. “My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.” Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. “I am glad to see you, ''amico. Come sta?'' Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio! In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, “Bubler,” for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.

If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.

By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are sustained; the gentleman’s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world saw. In which heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.

It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartett of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was “to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished.” It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which had been extremely ill chosen.

It was easy to see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.

No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night, is so solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer time, I often rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day’s work before breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep—in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The colour and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar house-hold objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his


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142 Jess decided that the argument might as well come right then. So she halted her mother on the verge of her plans for renewing the girl's wardrobe in a style more befitting the means of Lily Pendleton's mother, than her own!

"We have got to pay our debts," declared the girl, warmly. "Every penny must be paid, Mother, dear. Let's be free of bills and duns for once, at least. Let us start square with the world—and stay square if we can."

Mrs. Morse did not wish her daughter to use the prize money for their general needs. Jess had much trouble to convince her that it would make her, Jess, far happier to do that than to own the finest set of furs, or the most beautiful evening gown, that would be displayed upon the Hill that winter.

She did agree, finally, however, to have a new dress so that she could attend the M. O. R. reception that week, at which her play was read aloud by Miss Gould herself, and it was praised by the audience until Jess's ears fairly burned. Then the committee properly appointed went into executive session and plans for the production of "The Spring Road" went with a rush.

It was easy to choose a cast of characters. With a little advice from Jess it was not hard to select the very girls and boys best fitted to act


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Rh shoulder, as I thought—and there was no such thing.

For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.

I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the house.

“Is it haunted?” I asked.

The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, “I say nothing.”

“Then it is haunted?”

“Well!” cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation—“I wouldn’t sleep in it.”

“Why not?”

“If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to ring ’em; and all the doors in a house bang with nobody to bang ’em; and all sorts of feet treading about with no feet there; why then,” said the landlord, “I’d sleep in that house.”

“Is anything seen there?”

The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for “Ikey!”

The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and overrunning his boots.

“This gentleman wants to know,” said the landlord, “if anything’s seen at the Poplars.”

Ooded woman with a howl,” said Ikey, in a state of great freshness.

“Do you mean a cry?”

“I mean a bird, sir.”

“A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see her?”

“I seen the howl.”

“Never the woman?”

“Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together.”

“Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?”

“Lord bless you, sir! Lots.”

“Who?”

“Lord bless you, sir! Lots.”

“The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop?”

“Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn’t go a-nigh the place. No!” observed the young man, with considerable feeling; “he an’t over-wise, an’t Perkins, but he an’t such a fool as that.”

(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins’s knowing better.)

“Who is—or who was—the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?”

“Well!” said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other, “they say, in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he ’ooted the while.”

This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in ’em, after seeing the hooded woman. Also, that a personage dimly described as “a hold chap, a sort of a one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, ‘Why not? and even if so, mind your own business, had encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the landlord) Anywheres.

Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses—both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.

To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins’s brother-in-law (a whip and harness-maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.

Within, I found it, as I had expected, tran-


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Rh in the piece. And such selection was made that very week, the typewritten 'sides' distributed to the several players, and the boys and girls went to work to memorize their parts. Lance Darby and Chet Belding were both in the play, and although neither Laura, nor Jess herself, had a part, they were both so busy (for they were on the M. O. R. play committee) that for a few days athletics and sports were well-nigh neglected.

Through the good-natured manager of the Centerport Opera House, scenery and much of the properties and some costumes for the inferior characters were to be obtained. But the principal characters would furnish their own costumes, and that is where Lily Pendleton began to lose her dissatisfaction. Disappointed as she had been regarding the decision of the committee, when she found that she was cast for an important part in Jess's play she "came out of the sulks," as Bobby termed it.

Mr. Monterey suggested to the committee, too, the name of a man to take charge of the rehearsals—really, to be stage director of "The Spring Road." He came to the M. O. R. house one afternoon to read the play—a dapper, foreign-looking man of an indeterminate age, who continually twirled a silken black mustache and


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144 listened devotedly to any girl who talked to him.

Lily began to cultivate Mr. Pizotti assiduously. Really, one might have supposed she had written the play, instead of Jess Morse, she was so frequently in conference with Mr. Pizotti that first afternoon.

Bobby, who had likewise been cast for a part in "The Spring Road," watched Lily's actions with the stage manager with a good deal of disgust.

"What do you know about that foolish girl?" she demanded. "I'll wager that greasy foreigner has got a wife and ten children—and neglects them. He has brilliantine on that moustache, and he smells of hair-oil, and I'll wager, too his hair will show gray at the roots, and I know it is thin on top."

"How wise you are, Miss Bobby," said Nellie, who heard her. "For a child you seem to have learned a lot."

"I'm foxy," returned Bobby, grinning impishly. "I'm fully as smart as that kid brother of Alice Long's. He came up to see us the other day—Alice brought him. Aunt Mary is real old fashioned, you know, and she sat in the kitchen darning and Tommy was playing around the floor. She thought it was getting toward tea time and she said to him:


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Rh Tommy, go into the front hall and see if the clock is running, that's a good boy.'

"Tommy came back after a minute, and says:

No, ma'am, it ain't running; it's standing still. But it's wagging it's tail!

"And there's Lil putting on her hat in a hurry so as to meet the man when Miss Gould is through with him, and walk down the block Did you ever?" exclaimed Jess.

"Poor Pretty Sweet!" groaned Bobby. "His nose is out of joint. He has been Lil's bright and shining cavalier for months. Dear, dear me! The Duchess of Dusenberry—was that the name of Lil's play?—sure does have her favorites, and like the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland," has only one command for her discarded courtiers: 'Off with their heads! and Bobby giggled as she peered from the window to watch the dapper Mr. Pizotti and Lily Pendleton walk down the street side by side.


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352 the various quarters which has been transmitted to us affords a good idea of the tribes taking part in the conquest of Egypt; for the most part they were from South Arabia. We shall not be inaccurate if we date the commencement of Fūsṭāṭ even before the evacuation of Alexandria (642).

The conqueror of Egypt met the same fate as his great Syrian colleague Khālid; Omar did not choose to allow his various lieutenants to become too powerful, unless he was absolutely sure of them. He appears, therefore, shortly before his death to have transferred Upper Egypt as an independent province to 'Abdallāh ibn Sa'd ibn 'Abī Sarḥ. 'Abdallāh was probably more of a financier than a warrior; he remitted more to the central exchequer, but had no personal authority with the troops. After Omar's death Othman placed him also in authority over Lower Egypt, and recalled 'Amr. When however, after the restoration of order in Constantinople, a Byzantine fleet under the command of Manuel suddenly appeared before Alexandria, and the town rose in rebellion (645), 'Abdallāh was helpless. At the instigation of the troops Othman sent back the tried and trusted 'Amr, who in a very short time drove the Byzantines out of the country and retook Alexandria, this time by force, in 646. Immediately after this success however he was compelled again to relinquish the province to 'Abdallāh, as he refused with scorn to retain the military command without the civil administration. Personal enrichment to some extent — and that has always been the principal aim of the heroes of the conquest — was only possible by manipulation of the taxes; and 'Abdallāh was a foster-brother of the Caliph. Still it must be admitted that 'Abdallāh was not without merit, not only in regard to the taxes, but also in the extension of the boundaries. Thus, for instance, he regulated the conditions on the Upper Egyptian border by treaty with the Nubians (April 652), and on the western side he advanced as far as Tripolis. His greatest achievement however was the extension of the fleet.

Here he joined the efforts of Mu'āwiya in Syria, who himself built ships. The main dockyard however appears to have been Alexandria, and in all the great sea-fights we find a co-operation of Egyptian and Syrian vessels. Arabian tradition neglects their maritime expeditions to a surprising extent, but Western sources have always emphasised this feature of the Arabian success in warfare. The intelligence gathered from the papyri during the last few years shews that the care for the building and manning of the fleet was, at all events in Egypt at the end of the seventh century, one of the chief occupations of the administration. Mu'āwiya required the fleet first and foremost against Byzantium, for, as long as the Greeks had command of the sea, no rest might be expected in Syria and as little in Alexandria. The first task for Mu'āwiya was to seize from the Byzantines their naval base, Cyprus, which lay dangerously near. The first marine expedition of the Arabs was against Cyprus in


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New Year had ushered in the first big fall of snow—and it kept coming. Every few days, for the following fortnight, snow fell until Centerport's street-cleaning department was swamped, and the drifts lay deep upon the vacant lots and against fences and blind walls.

Skating was done for, for the ice on the lake had become overloaded, and had broken up into a shifting mass of blocks, grinding against each other when the wind blew, and threatening the safety of any craft that tried to put out in it.

So traffic on Lake Luna ceased, and, of course, ice-boating was likewise impossible. Chet and Lance Darby, had they not been so extremely busy learning their parts in the new play, could not have used their aero-iceboat during this time. Sleds were out in force, however—bobsleds, double-runners, toboggans, "framers," and every sort of coasting paraphernalia. Even the Whiffle Street hill was made a coasting place by the


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Rh young folk of the neighborhood, much to the despair of some grouty people who had forgotten their own youth, and who either telephoned their complaints to the police, or sprinkled ashes on the slide in the early morning hours.

It was at this time, however, that Mrs. Case, the girls' physical instructor of Central High, took her class in ski running out into the open.

At first the dozen or more girls had practiced an their athletic field, which was now snow-covered, too. It was a particularly odd experience to stand upon narrow boards of ash, some ten feet in length, and then try to shuffle along on them without tipping sideways, or plunging head-first into a drift.

Each ski runner held a pole, with a spike in one end, and this was an aid to balancing, as well as of additional use if one tumbled down. It was no easy task, the girls found, to get up when they had been thrown into a drift.

"My!" commented Bobby Hargrew, "if you cross your feet going down hill on these things, you're likely to dislocate every joint in your body."

"Be sure you do not cross your feet, then," advised Mrs. Case, grimly. "I have shown you all the correct position to stand upon these skis. The professional ski runner does not even use a


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148 pole. He will take the steep sides of mountains at a two-mile a minute rate. I have seen them do so in Switzerland and in Sweden and Norway. And they will jump into the air from the verge of high banks, and land on the drift at the bottom with perfect balance."

"This is going to be no cinch to learn," pronounced Bobby. "I know it's going to be some time before I am good enough at it to jump off the top of Boulder Head on Cavern Island—now you see!"

"You would better take a much less difficult jump first," advised Mrs. Case, smiling. "It will be enough fun for us to learn to travel on the skis without any frills. In Europe—especially on the road between St. Moritz and Celerina—I have often seen ski riders with horses. A horse trots ahead, drawing several riders on skis, who cling together by the aid of a rope fastened to the horse's collar. Sometimes each rider has a horse, and they race horses just as though they were riding in sleighs.

"It is great sport, but like every other healthful form of athletics, it is often made dangerous and objectionable by those who are reckless, or rough. We will learn to balance ourselves, and to coast down a gentle descent."

So, the next Saturday, the teacher and more


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Rh than a dozen girls of Central High piled into a big, straw-filled sleigh, and were whisked out into the hills south of the city. The inn at Robinson's Woods—a popular picnicking ground in summer—was made their headquarters, and there they left the sleigh and took to the difficult skis.

The climb to the top of the bluff overlooking the speedway, on which everybody—almost—who owned a sleigh was driving that afternoon, was not an easy one for the girls. Mrs. Case, holding her body erect, yet easily, shuffled up the incline with such little apparent effort that some of her pupils were in despair.

"We'll never be able to run as you do, Mrs. Case!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Never! Why—ouch! There, I came near tumbling down that time."

"Keep your balance. Use the pole if you have to," advised the instructor. "It is not a running motion—it is more like a slide."

"Say!" growled Bobby, who was having trouble, too. "It beats the 'debutante slink,' that came in with narrow skirts. I feel as if I was tumbling down every second."

But they gained confidence in time. They reached the top of the bluff and then the long, easy slope, right beside the speedway, spread,


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Rh the summer 649, and this was attended with success. Aradus, which lay still nearer to Syria, was not taken till a year later. In 655 Mu'āwiya contemplated an expedition to Constantinople, in which Egyptian ships in considerable numbers took part. On the Lycian coast near Phoenix, the Dhāt aṣ-Ṣawārī of the Arabs, a great battle ensued, the importance of which is clear from the fact that the Byzantines were led in person by the Emperor, Constans II. Either a certain Abu-l-A'war acted as admiral of the Arab fleet, or, according to other reports, the Egyptian governor 'Abdallāh. Trustworthy details are missing; in any case the battle resulted in a catastrophe comparable with the defeat on the Yarmūk. The powerful fleet of the Byzantines, supposed to be 500 ships strong, was completely destroyed, and the Emperor sought refuge in flight. The Arabs however seem also to have sustained losses sufficient to prevent them from following up their victory by advancing on Constantinople. Fortunately for the Byzantines Othman was murdered shortly afterwards, and thereupon began the struggle for the Caliphate which forced Mu'āwiya to conclude an ignominious peace with the Byzantines.

Later on Mu'āwiya took up afresh this expedition against the Byzantines, this time by water, and in Cilicia and Armenia. The Byzantine Armenia had been visited as far back as 642 by an expedition under Ḥabīb ibn Maslama, in connexion with the conquest of Mesopotamia, and its capital Dwin, north of the Araxes, had been temporarily occupied. Later expeditions were less fortunate, as an Armenian chief, Theodore, the ruler of the Reshtunians, organised an energetic resistance, and after his first success was supported by Byzantium with troops, and also by the grant of the title Patricius. Later on Theodore agreed with the Arabs and placed himself under their suzerainty. This caused a reaction of the Byzantine party and thereupon a counter-demonstration of the Arabs, who pushed forward under Ḥabīb as far as the Caucasus. He was supported by a contingent from the conquered land of Persia, which advanced even beyond the Caucasus, but was there destroyed by the Chazars. In Armenia also the Arabs could only hold their own until the beginning of the civil war. After the reunion in the empire sea and land enterprises, such as those already described, formed part of the yearly recurring duties of the government during the whole of the period of the Umayyads, and these enterprises were only discontinued during an occasional peace. From the papyri we know that for the annual summer expeditions (Jaish, ) special war taxes in kind were levied. These regular expeditions were made in the Near East in two directions; on the one hand to the west, to North Africa, and from 711 onwards to Spain, as we shall illustrate more fully in Chapter XII, and on the other hand to the north, embracing Asia Minor and Armenia.

The conquest of Constantinople was of course the goal which was always present to the minds of the Arabs. More than once too they came


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150 spotless, before them. Mrs. Case showed them how to start, and after a fashion several of the bigger girls reached the bottom of the hill, and then panted up again, pronouncing it the best ever!

Bobby would not be outdone, as she said, "by anything in skirts," and so she ventured. Halfway down the hill one of her skis must have struck something—perhaps the stub of a bush sticking out of the snow. Whew! Bobby turned almost a complete somersault!

She was buried so deep in a drift—and head first, at that—that it took both Laura and Mrs. Case to pull her out.

"Oh-me-oh-my!" cried Bobby, who looked like an animated snow-girl for the moment. "And just as I was getting on so well, too! Wasn't that mean?"

"Perhaps you'd better not try any more today, Clara," said the instructor.

"And let those other girls get ahead of me? Well! I guess not!" declared Miss Hargrew, and she ploughed back to the top of the hill, fastened her feet upon the skis again, and started once more.

Laura and Jess Morse were on the hilltop, looking out upon the white track over which the sleighs were flying.


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Rh "Look there!" gasped Jess, seizing her chum's arm. "Isn't that the Pendletons' sleigh?"

"Of course it is. With the big plumes and the pair of dappled grays? And that stiff and starched coachman driving? No mistake," admitted Laura.

"Who's in the sleigh with Lil?" demanded Jess.

"As I live!" cried her chum, in a somewhat horrified tone. "It—it is that Pizotti—that man!"

"Can you beat her?" said Jess, shaking her head.

"How foolish!" added Laura. "He is not a good man. He has known her so short a time—and to go sleigh-riding with her. Lil will be talked about, sure enough."

"Well, I don't know as we need to worry about her," said Jess, shrugging her shoulders.

But Laura Belding could not put her schoolmate's indiscreet actions out of her mind so easily. She wondered if Mrs. Pendleton knew of Lily's familiarity with the foreign-looking Pizotti. The man might know his business as a stage director; but he certainly was neither of the age, nor the condition in life, to be cultivated as a friend by any young girl.

Lily Pendleton was so foolishly romantic, and


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152 so crazy about theatrical matters, that to be noticed by any person connected with the stage, or theatrical affairs, quite turned her head. And then, she still talked a great deal about her own play, "The Duchess of Dawnleigh." She was sure it had not been given a proper reading—especially by Mr. Monterey. Perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, this stranger, Mr. Pizotti, had promised the foolish girl that he would help her get "The Duchess of Dawnleigh" produced.


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354 very near to the attainment of their plan; twice under Mu'āwiya, the first occasion being principally a land expedition under Faḍāla, who conquered Chalcedon (668), and from thence in the spring of 669, in combination with the Caliph's son Yazīd, who had advanced to his help, besieged Constantinople. These land expeditions were in vain, and equally so were the regular, so-called seven years' fights between the fleets of the two powers, these lasting from 674 or even earlier until the death of Mu'āwiya (680), and taking place immediately before Constantinople, where the Arabs had secured for themselves a naval base. When at a later date, after the termination of the civil wars, the second great wave of expansion set in under the Caliph Walīd, Constantinople again appeared attainable to them. The remarkable siege of Constantinople, which lasted at least a year (716-717), took place, it is true, afterwards under Walīd's successor, the Caliph Sulaimān. This also ended unsuccessfully for the Arabs. The Arabian boundary remained as before mainly the Amanus and the Caucasus, and beyond that the limits of their dominion varied. But all these regular wars are connected in the closest degree with the internal history of the Byzantine empire, and for this reason they are treated in detail elsewhere. Saracens in this quarter came rather early to the frontier which for a considerable time they were destined not to cross.

The connexion of matters has compelled us whilst reviewing the relations between the Saracens and the Byzantines to anticipate other events in the dominions of the Caliphate. We now return to the reign of the Caliph Omar, under whom and his successor the expansion reached limits unchanged for a considerable time, for we cannot gain from the delineation of the mere outward expansion of the Saracens any satisfactory conception of the Arabian migration, which completely metamorphosed the political contour of the Mediterranean world. Even the interest of the student, in the first instance directed to the West, must not overlook the civil wars in the young Arabian world-empire, for they are in even greater degree than either Byzantines or Franks responsible for bringing to a standstill the movement which threatened Europe. By doing so we at the same time notice the beginnings of Muslim civilisation. If we fail truly to estimate this the continuity postulated at the commencement of our chapter becomes obscured, and the great influence of the East on western countries in the Middle Ages remains incomprehensible.

Omar died at the zenith of his life, unexpectedly struck down in the midst of his own community by the dagger of a Persian slave (3 Nov. 644). While Abū Bakr had decreed him as his successor simply by will, because the succession was felt on all sides to be evident, the dying Omar did not venture to entrust any particular one of his fellow-companions with the succession. This strict, conscientious, and sincerely religious man did not dare in the face of death to discriminate between the


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was a particularly frank, outspoken girl, and when she met Lily Pendleton that Saturday night at the rehearsal of Jess's play, she came out "flat-footed," as her chum would have said, with the question:

"Who was that in the sleigh with you to-day, Lil?"

Lily flushed instantly, bridled, and smiled. "Who do you s'pose?" she returned.

"I don't believe your mother knew you had that theatrical man to drive with you," said Laura, bluntly.

"Why, how you talk! I merely met Signor Pizotti, and took him up"

"You don't know who he is," spoke Laura.

"Oh, indeed, Miss! And do you?" demanded Lily, rather sharply.

"No. And I don't want to know him."

"He is a very scholarly man—and he knows


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154 all about staging this play. If it wasn't for him, I guess, 'The Spring Road' would suffer from frost," said Lily, with an unkind laugh.

"That may be," said Laura, flushing a little herself, for any slur cast upon her chum's play hurt her, too. "But his knowledge of how to produce or stage a play does not establish his private character."

"Pooh! you are interfering in something that you know nothing about," declared Miss Pendleton, loftily. "And it does not concern you at all."

"I do not believe your mother would approve," ventured Laura.

"Never you mind about my mother," snapped Lily, and turned her back on Mother Wit.

The latter took herself to task later, thinking she had been too presumptuous.

"But really," she said to Jess, on their way home that evening, "I did not mean to be. Only, the man looks so unreliable. I'm afraid of him."

"I'm not afraid of him," said Jess, decidedly. "I only dislike him. But there is no accounting for tastes. My mother knew of a foolish girl who wrote to an opera tenor—one of those handsome, spoiled foreigners, and she sent him her photograph and told him how much she liked his singing—and all that. Just a silly letter, you


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Rh know. But she didn't sign her name and she thought he would never learn who she was.

"But he went to the photographer," continued Jess, "and bribed him to tell who the girl was, and by that time she had written to the man several times, and he had written to her. So then he threatened her that if she did not give him five hundred dollars he would send her letters to her father. And she was in dreadful trouble, for she was afraid of what her father would do."

"Oh, Lil won't do anything like that!" gasped Laura. "I don't believe she even thinks she cares about that Pizotti. It is only his foreign way that makes it appear so. But I believe he is flattering her about her play, and perhaps will get money from her or her mother."

"Pizotti! Ha!" grunted Jess, before they separated. "I'm like Bobby Hargrew: I don't believe that's even his name. It sounds too fancy to be a real name."

But Mr. Pizotti was an able man in his business. He came from time to time to the M. O. R. house and his advice regarding the play was always practical. He was something of a musician, too, and played the accompaniments for the girls who sang in "The Spring Road." He suggested improvements in the costumes, too; and


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156 Lily Pendleton was entirely guided by his taste in her choice of the gowns she was to wear in the production.

Mrs. Pendleton was a very busy woman in a social way and allowed her daughter to do about as she pleased. Lily aped the manners of girls who had long since graduated from school and were flashy in their dress and manners.

To tell the truth, the after-hour athletics, governed by Mrs. Case, had been the one saving thing in Lily Pendleton's life for some months. She would have become so enamored of fashion and frivolity, had it not been for the call of athletics, that she would have fallen sadly behind in her school work.

But she liked certain activities enjoyed by those who were attentive to Mrs. Case's classes; and to gain these privileges one had to stand well in her general studies. Lily was smart enough, was a quick student, and so kept up her school work.

This business of acting appealed to her immensely. She was "just crazy about it," as she admitted to her particular friend, Hester Grimes.

"I wish my folks were poor, so that I would have to work when I leave school," she declared. "Then I'd go on the stage myself."


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644-655] candidates, all of whom were more or less incompetent. He therefore nominated a Board of Election (Shūrā), composed of six of the most respected of his colleagues, with the instruction to select from their midst the new Caliph. Ali, Othman, Zubair, Ṭalḥa, Sa'd ibn Abī Waḳḳāṣ and 'Abd-ar-Raḥmān ibn 'Auf had now to decide the fate of Islām. After long hesitation they agreed on Othman, probably because he appeared to be the weakest and most pliable, and each of them hoped to rule, first through him and afterwards in succession to him. This choice looks like a reaction; they had had enough of Omar's energetic and austere government — for he upheld the autocratic power of the representative of the prophet, even as against the proudest and most successful generals, probably less from personal ambition than from religious and political conviction. They speculated correctly, but they overlooked the fact that in a race to profit by the weakness of Othman his own family had a start which could not be overtaken. Othman was however an Umayyad, i.e. he belonged to the old Mecca aristocracy, who for a long time were the chief opponents of the prophet, but who, after his victory, had with fine political instinct seceded to his camp and had even migrated to Medina, in order to emulate the new religious aristocracy created by Mahomet. In this they succeeded only too well, for they counted among them men of remarkable intelligence, with whom the short-sighted intriguers, the honest blusterers and the pious unpolitical members of the circle of Companions could not keep up. They now induced Othman, who had at once nominated his cousin Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam to be the omnipotent Secretary of State, to fill all the positions of any importance or of any value with Umayyads or their partisans.

Later on Othman was reproached on all sides with this nepotism, which caused great discontent throughout the entire empire. To this discontent there was added an increasing reaction against the system of finance, founded by Omar and carried on without alteration by Othman. The lust of booty had led the Arabs out to battle, and the spoils belonged to them after deduction of the so-called prophet's fifth. But what was to be done with the enormous landed property which victors in such small numbers had acquired, and who was to receive the tribute paid yearly by the subjected peoples? Payment of this money to the respective conquerors of the individual territories would have been the most logical method of dealing with it, but with the fluctuations in the Arabian population this plan would have caused insuperable difficulties, apart from which it would have been from a statesman's point of view extremely unwise. Omar therefore founded a state treasury. The residents of the newly formed military camps received a fixed stipend; the surplus of the receipts flowed to Medina, where it was not indeed capitalised but utilised for state pensions, which the Caliph decreed according to his own judgment to the members of the theocracy, graduated according to rank and dignity. Under the impartial Omar


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Rh "You wouldn't!" exclaimed Hester.

"I would in a minute. And this Signor Pizotti could place me very advantageously"

"Pooh! you don't believe anything that fellow says, do you?" demanded her chum, who was eminently practical and had none of the silly ideas in her head that troubled Lily.

"You don't know him!" exclaimed Lily.

"Don't want to," replied Hester, gruffly.

Preparations for the first dress rehearsal of "The Spring Road" went on apace. But, of course, Bobby Hargrew would have bad luck! She was thrown from Short and Long's bobsled one night and had to be helped home. The hurt to her foot was a small matter; but the doctor said she would have to wear her arm in a sling for a time.

"And how can I play Arista with my arm strapped to my side?" wailed Bobby, when Jess and Laura came in to commiserate with her over the accident. "Oh, dear me! I am the most unlucky person in the world. If it was raining soup I'd have a hole in my dipper!"

Mr. Monterey, the local manager, came himself to the dress rehearsal. He only sat out front, and watched and listened; and he went away without expressing an opinion to anybody. Yet Jess saw him there and was excited by the


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158 possibility of Mr. Monterey's recognizing the value of the play for professional purposes.

At the Morse domicile things were going better, and the girl's mind was vastly relieved from present troubles. Yet she was wise enough to see that in the offing the same danger of debt threatened them if they were not very, very careful.

It was true that scarcely half the prize money had been spent; yet Mrs. Morse's regular work on the Courier barely fed them; and her success with the popular magazines was but fitful. Sometimes two months passed without her mother receiving even a ten-dollar check from her fugitive work.

Oh, if she could only find somebody who would take the play—after the M. O. R.'s had made use of it—and whip it into shape for professional use, and give her a part of the proceeds!

That was the thought continually knocking at the door of Jess Morse's mind. It was "too good to be true," yet she kept thinking about it, and hoping for the impossible, and dreaming of it.

However, the dress rehearsal of "The Spring Road" was pronounced by the teachers and Mr. Pizotti as eminently satisfactory. Bobby was


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Rh letter-perfect in her part, if she did have "a damaged wing," as she said. And most of the other important roles were well learned.

The very prettiest girl of Central High had been chosen for the chief female character, and in this case prettiness went with brains. She had learned her part, and was natural and graceful, and was altogether a delight.

As for Launcelot Darby, he was the most romantic looking Truant Lover that could have been found. And he played with feeling, too, although his mates were making a whole lot of fun of him on the side. But Laura had urged him to do his best, and Lance would have done anything in his power to please Mother Wit.

Chet Belding, as a peasant, "made up" well, and was letter perfect, too, in his part, if a little awkward. But that did not so much matter, considering the character he had to portray. And, of course, he would do nothing to belittle Jess's play. His whole heart was in his work, too.

So, after that first dress rehearsal, the committee and Jess were hopeful of success. The time for the production of the play was set, the tickets printed, and out of school hours everything was in a bustle of preparation for the great occasion.


text: The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 19


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 female foreigners, who, I dare say, were very agreeable. As I have formed a sullen resolution about presentations, which I never break, (above once a month,) I begged -- to dispense me from being introduced, and intrigued for myself a place as far remote as possible from his fair guests, and very near a bottle of the best wine to confirm my misogyny. After coffee, I had accomplished my retreat as far as the hall, on full tilt towards your thé, which I was very eager to partake of, when I was arrested by -- requesting that I would make my bow to the French Ambassadress, who it seems is a Dillon, Irish, but born or bred in America; has been pretty, and is a blue, and of course entitled to the homage of all persons who have been printed. I returned, and it was then too late to detain Miss P -- over the tea-urn. I beg you to accept my regrets, and present my regards to Milady, and Miss P -- and Comte Alfred, and believe me ever yours, "NOEL BYRON." "APRIL 23, 1828. "MY DEAR LORD: I thank you for quizzing me and my 'learned Thebans.' I assure you, my notions on that score are limited to getting away with a whole skin, or sleeping quietly with a bro


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" to this!"

Bobby Hargrew, her arm still in a sling, seized Jess Morse by the wrist and "tiptoed" along the corridor of the second wing of Central High, where the small offices were located, and with tragic expression pointed to a certain door that stood ajar.

Jess, amazed, did not speak, but listened. Out of the room came a muffled voice, but the words spoken were these:

"Unhand me! Nay, keep your distance, Count Mornay! I am no peasant wench to be charmed either by your gay coat or your gay manner. Ah! your villainies are known to me, nor can you hide the cloven hoof beneath the edge of Virtue's robe."

"Ha! ha!" chuckled Bobby, almost strangling with laughter. "He ought to have worn boots and so hidden his 'cloven hoof.' Come away, Jess, or I shall burst! Did you ever hear the like?"


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Rh "Why—why, what is it?" demanded Jess, mystified.

"Oh, don't! Wait till I laugh!" chuckled Bobby, when they were around the corner of the corridor again. "Isn't that rich?"

"Who was it talking?" asked Jess.

"Talking! Didn't you recognize that oration?"

"I did not. Mother doesn't allow me to read any penny-dreadful story papers, magazines of books."

"Oh, ho! Wait!" gasped Bobby. "That's Lil."

"Lily Pendleton?"

"You evidently haven't heard any of the 'Duchess of Dusenberry' before. That's it!"

"Not part of her play?"

"That is one of the melodramatic bits," said Bobby, weakly, leaning against the wall for support. "Yes, really, Jess. That is in her play. I've heard her recite it before."

"My goodness me!" gasped Jess.

"It's not all so bad, I guess. But when she gets flowery and romantic she just tears off such paragraphs as that. 'Nor can you hide the cloven hoof beneath the edge of Virtue's robe.' Isn't that a peach?"

"Bobby!" exclaimed Jess, breathless herself


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162 by now, "you use the worst slang of any girl in Central High."

"That's all right. But Lil's using worse language than I ever dreamed of," laughed Bobby. "I've heard her spouting that sort of stuff time and time again. When she shuts herself up, presumably to study her part in your play, half the time she is reciting her own lines. She likes the sound of 'em. And she had that Pizotti fellow backed in a corner of the front hall at the M. O. R. house the other afternoon, reciting that same sort of stuff to him.

"Repeating her play?"

"Yep. The silly! And he pretending that it was great, and applauding her. I'll wager that he sees a way to make money out of Lil Pendleton, or he wouldn't stand for it."

Jess carried this idea in her mind, although she was not as much troubled by her schoolmate's foolishness as was Mother Wit. There was a loyalty among the girls of Central High, however, that few ignored. Despite the fact that Jess had never especially liked Lily Pendleton, she would have done anything in her power to help her.

So, that very evening, when she was marketing, she chanced to see something that brought Lil's affairs into her mind again. She was going


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Rh into Mr. Vandergriff's store when she saw a man, bundled in a big ulster, talking with the proprietor.

Griff came forward to wait on Jess, and the girl might not have noticed the man by the desk a second time had she not overheard Mr. Vandergriff say:

"You take advantage of my good nature, Abel. Because I knew you in the old country, you come here and plead poverty. I can't see your family suffer, for your wife is a nice woman, if you are a rascal!"

"Hard words! Hard words, Vandergriff," muttered the other.

Jess saw that he was a little man, and the high ulster collar muffled the lower part of his face. But as he turned toward the door she caught a glimpse of a glossy black mustache, and two beady black eyes.

It was Mr. Pizotti!

The girl was so astonished, for the man was shabbily dressed, and shuffled out with several bundles under his arm, that she could scarcely remember what else she wanted to buy when Griff asked her.

"Oh, I say, Griff!" she demanded, breathlessly, and in a whisper. "Who was that man who just went out?"


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356 this was not disagreeable to any, the more especially as at that time the gains from the booty were still very large. But when under Othman these gains dwindled and became ever smaller, this state treasury appeared to the Arabian provincial tribes as an oppression of the provinces. The nepotism of Othman increased the opposition, and it finally found expression in open revolt. These fanatical partisans were of opinion that Othman was the man against whom the real holy war should be waged. The Kūfa men were first to rebel against the governor nominated by Othman (655); with unaccountable weakness Othman immediately abandoned his representative. The Egyptians were the most energetic in their protest, and started for Medina in April 655 to the number of about 500. The disquiet which was simmering on all sides was secretly fomented by the disappointed Companions in Medina; they were the real plotters who made use of the discontent of the provincials. When after long discussion the Egyptians besieged Othman in his own house these Companions looked on inactively, or at the most excused themselves by a few pretended manœuvres, but in fact they were not displeased when the rebels stormed the house and slew the defenceless old Caliph whilst at prayer (17 June 655).

From this time onward fate took its own course. Among the Medina Companions Ali was now doubtless the nearest claimant to the Caliphate, and some even went so far as to render him homage. On the other hand, would he not certainly appear to all the Umayyads, and especially to the powerful governor of Syria, as the murderer of Othman? Mu'āwiya was firmly established in Syria, and was in a position to venture, under this pretext — to him probably more than a pretext — to dispute the Caliphate even with the son-in-law of the prophet. The Umayyads moreover were not the only enemies that Ali had to contend with. His former allies, Zubair and Ṭalḥa, who were at least as much to blame as he, roused the people against him, and this was done even more determinedly by the prophet's widow 'Ā'isha, who had always been opposed to him. They were supported by the Baṣra tribes, whilst Ali sought support with the Kūfa people. Near Baṣra the quarrel came to a decision, in the so-called Camel battle, which takes its name from the fact that 'Ā'isha, in accordance with old Arabian custom, was present at the battle in a camel-palanquin, as a sacred sign of war. Ali conquered and 'Ā'isha's part was played out. Ṭalḥa and Zubair were killed in the fight (9 Dec. 656). Ali was thus master of 'Irāḳ, and Kūfa became his residence.

Hereupon Arabia ceased to be the centre of the empire, and Medina sank to the status of a provincial town, in which piety and easy-going elegance had the necessary quiet for development. The history of Nearer Asia however again resolved itself, as it did before Islām, into the opposition between 'Irāḳ and Syria. The two halves of the empire armed themselves for the fight for supremacy, Muslims against Muslims. At first the better discipline of the Syrians and their higher culture


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164 "Why—oh, that was only Abel Plornish."

"Abel Plornish!"

"Yep. Poor, useless creature," said the boy, with disgust. "Or, so father says. He knew Abel in England. You know, father came from London before he was married," and Griff smiled.

"But this man—are you sure his name is Plornish?"

"Quite, Jess. Why, he plays the violin, or the piano, in some cheap moving picture place, I believe."

"Then he is a musician?" demanded Jess, breathlessly.

"And a bad one, I reckon. But he has done other things. He's been on the stage. And he's even worked in the Centerport Opera House, I believe."

"And that is really his name?" asked Jess.

"It's an awful one, isn't it? Plornish! Nothing very romantic or fancy about that," laughed Griff. "Now, what else, Jess?"

Jess was so disturbed by this discovery that she could only think to ask Griff one more question. That related to where Plornish lived.

"Somewhere on Governor Street. I think it's Number 9. Tenement house. Oh, they're poor, and I believe when he gets any money he spends


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 ken one, in some of my old Glens where I used to dream in my former excursions. I should prefer a gray Greek stone over me to Westminster Abbey; but I doubt if I shall have the luck to die so happily. A lease of my 'body's length' is all the land which I should covet in that quarter.

"What the Honorable Dug and his Committee may decide, I do not know, and still less what I may decide (for I am not famous for decision) for myself; but if I could do any good in any way, I should be happy to contribute thereto, and without éclat. I have seen enough of that in my time, to rate it at its value. I wish you were upon that Committee, for I think you would set them going one way or the other; at present they seem a little dormant. I dare not venture to dine with you to-morrow, nor indeed any day this week; for three days of dinners during the last seven days, have made me so head-achy and sulky, that it will take me a whole Lent to subside again into any thing like independence of sensation from the pressure of materialism. *** But I shall take my chance of finding you the first fair morning for a visit. Ever yours, "NOEL BYRON." "MAY 7, 1823. "MY DEAR LORD: I return the poesy, which


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Rh

JOHN SMITH'S ANCESTORS
READER mine, wisest of mortals that you are, do you feel sure that you know how to deal with a proposition, which is at the same time unquestionable and impossible — which must be true, yet can not be true? Do you know just what degree of intellectual hospitality to give to such a proposition — whether to receive and entertain it (and if so how) or cast it from you, and how to do that? Possibly you were never consciously at bay before a proposition of that kind, and therefore lack the advantage of skill in its disposal. Attend, then, O child of mortality — consider and be wise:

You have, or have had, two parents — whom God prosper if they live and rest if dead. Each of them had two parents; in other words, you had at some time and somewhere four grandparents, and right worthy persons they were, I'll be sworn, albeit you may not be able to name them without stopping to take thought. Of great-grandparents you surely had no fewer than eight — that is to say,


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Rh it on himself. I saw him once on Market Street dressed like a dandy. But when his wife and children come in here they look pretty shabby."

It wasn't very late, and, anyway, Jess couldn't have slept that night without talking the matter over with Mother Wit. She left her basket in the kitchen, saw that her mother was busy at her desk, and ran up Whiffle Street hill to the Belding house.

"Is dat suah yo', Miss Jess?" asked Mammy Jinny, peering out of the side door when Jess rang the bell. "Come right erlong in, honey. Yo's jes' as welcome as de flowers in de May-time. B-r-r! ain't it cold?"

"It is cold, Mammy," said Jess to the Beldings' old serving woman. "Where's Laura?"

"She's done gone up to her room ter listen ter Mars' Chet an' dat Lance Darby boy orate dem pieces dey is goin' to recite in school nex' week."

"They are going to act in my play, Mammy!" cried Jess.

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. But it's all recitationin' ter me. Dat leetle Bobby Hargrew was in here and she say it's jes' like w'en you-all useter recite at de Sunday night concerts in de Sunday school room. An' dem pieces yo' orated den was a hull lot nicer dan w'at Mars' Chet is sayin'. 'Member how you recited dat 'Leetle


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166 drops o' water, leetle grains o' sand piece, Miss Jess? Dat was suah a nice piece o' po'try."

"And you don't care for the parts you have heard of my play, Mammy?" asked Jess, much amused.

"Suah 'nuff, now! Did you make up disher play dey is goin' ter act?" demanded Mammy Jinny.

"I certainly did."

"Wal, I hates ter hu't yo' feelin's, Miss Jess," said Mammy, gravely, "but dat 'Leetle drops o' water' po'try was a hull lot better—ter my min'! Ya'as'm! yo kin' go right up. Yo'll hear demall a-spoutin'—spoutin' jes' like whales!"

And so she did. Chet was reading his lines with much unction while striding up and down Laura's pretty little room. Lance and Mother Wit were his audience.

"For goodness sake, Chet!" cried Jess, breaking in. "Who told you your part was tragic, and that 'The Spring Road' was tragedy?"

"Huh?" questioned Chet, stopping short and blinking at her.

"Do read the lines naturally. Don't be 'orating,' as Mammy Jinny calls it. I guess she's right. 'Little drops of water' is better than all


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Rh that bombastic stuff. Do, do, my dear, speak it naturally."

"Hear her!" growled Chet. "And she wrote it!"

"I never really meant it to sound like that, Chet," declared Jess, shaking her head. "I really didn't. Why! it sounds almost as bad as 'The Duchess of Dawnleigh.

"Wha—what's that?" demanded Lance.

"Not Lil's play?" cried Laura. "Have you heard it?"

Jess told what she had heard at the door of the recitation room that afternoon, and they laughed over it.

"Yet I can see very well," continued Jess, "that you actors can make my words sound just as absurd if you want to. Do, do be natural."

"That's what I tell them," sighed Laura. "I am glad you heard Chet spouting here. One would think he was playing 'Hamlet,' or 'Richard III.

Chet was a little miffed. But he soon "came out of it," as Lance said, and he was so fond of Jess anyway that he would have tried his best to please her.

He grew more moderate in his "orating" and the girls, as critics, were better pleased. Lance took a leaf out of his chum's book, too, and


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656-658] carried the day. The recollection however of the brief political splendour of 'Irāḳ formed the basis for a movement which was destined to gain strength, which a century later swept away the rule of the Umayyads. Once more was the capital of the latest Asiatic world-power transferred to Babylon.

After the Camel battle Ali's position was thoroughly favourable, as Mu'āwiya could not take any energetic steps against him so long as Egypt remained on Ali's side. Mu'āwiya main attention was therefore fixed on Egypt; and in this view he was aided and abetted by 'Amr, the first conqueror of Egypt, who had allied himself with Mu'āwiya in the hope of attaining through him the governorship of Egypt. For that reason he rendered Mu'āwiya most important services in the war against Ali, and as Ali at this juncture advanced against Mu'āwiya a battle extending over several days ensued, after long delay, at Ṣiffīn on the Syrian border, not far distant from Raḳḳa (26-27 July 657). Ali's victory appeared certain, when 'Amr conceived the idea of fastening copies of the Koran to the points of the lances and calling on the holy book for a decision. This trick succeeded, and much against his will Ali was forced to yield to the pressure of the pious members of his army. A court of arbitration was thereupon agreed on. Mu'āwiya confidential representative was of course 'Amr, whilst Ali had forced upon him in a like capacity Mūsā al-Ash'arī, a man by no means thoroughly devoted to him. They had scarcely parted when those same pious members of his army altered their views, and now blamed Ali for having placed men, instead of God and the sword, as judges over him. Several thousand men separated from Ali and entered into a separate camp at Ḥarūrā, whence they were called Ḥarūrites, or secessionists, Khārijites. They resisted Ali by force, and he was compelled to cut down most of them at Nahrawān (7 July 658). Later on they split into innumerable small sects and still gave much trouble to Ali and the Umayyads. The sense of independence and the robber-knight ideas of the ancient Arabians lived. still in them, but under a religious cloak. Offshoots from these people, the so-called Ibāḍites, exist even to-day in South Arabia and in East and North Africa.

The information we have as to the result of the court of arbitration is untrustworthy. In any case the clever 'Amr outwitted his coadjudicator by persuading him also to deal with Ali and Mu'āwiya as being on the same footing, whilst of course Ali was the only one who had a Caliphate to lose. Ali appears actually to have been divested of this dignity by decree of the arbitration, but this decision did not induce him to abdicate. This arbitration court was held at Adhruḥ in the year 658. Even more painful for Ali than this failure was the loss of Egypt, which 'Amr shortly afterwards reconquered for himself, and administered until his death more as a viceroy than a governor. No definite decision was brought about between Ali and Mu'āwiya, as their forces were about equally


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168 when he declaimed his lines he succeeded in pleasing Jess and Laura the first time. Besides, Lance was naturally a better actor than Chet.

Mr. Pizotti had taught them how to enter properly, and how to take their cues; but to Jess's mind he was not the man to train amateurs to speak their parts with naturalness. If Miss Gould had not given so much time to the rehearsals of "The Spring Road" the play would have not been half the success it promised to be. And, of course, the Central High teacher gave her attention mainly to the girls in the cast of characters.

When Lance and Chet lounged off to the latter's den Jess instantly poured into Laura's ears her discovery of the identity of "Mr. Pizotti."

"Well, even at that he may be a man trying to earn his living. Many stage people change their names for business reasons. 'Plornish' is not an attractive name, you must admit," said Laura, smiling. Pizotti' fits his foreign look."

"But what is he trying to get out of Lil Pendleton?" demanded Jess, bluntly.

"That's what troubles me," admitted Mother Wit. "I believe he is trying to get money out of Lily, or from her folks. And it has to do


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Rh with Lil's play. You can see that she believes her play was slighted and that it is a great deal better than yours, Jess."

"I guess she has a good opinion of it," returned Jess, laughing.

"Well, suppose this fellow tells her she is right, and that he can get it produced, if she will put up the money?" suggested Mother Wit. "I—I wish Lil would place confidence in me."

"Tell her mother."

"No use," sighed Laura. "I doubt if she would even listen to me. She wouldn't want to be bothered. You know very well the kind of woman Mrs. Pendleton is."

"Well, I don't suppose it is any of our business, anyway," spoke Jess.

"It is. Lil is one of us—one of the girls of Central High. We have a deep interest in anything that concerns her. The only trouble is," sighed Laura, "I don't know just what is best to do."


text: The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 20


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snow still mantled the ground, and the coasting and ski running remained very popular sports with the girls and boys of Central High. But a day's hard rain, with a sharp frost after it, had given the ice-boating another lease of life, too. Lake Luna was a-glare from the mainland to Cavern Island, and the freight boats had given over running until the spring break-up.

Not that there were no open places in the ice—for there were, and dangerous holes, too. The current through the length of the lake was bound to make the ice weak in places. But near the Centerport shore was a long stretch of open ice that the authorities pronounced safe.

Chet and Lance got the Blue Streak out again and there wasn't a girl in the junior class who was not envious of Laura and Jess. Skating was tame beside traveling at a mile a minute in an aero-iceboat; and the other ice yachts were not in the same class with the invention of Chet and Lance.


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Rh The date set for the production of Jess's play in the big hall of the schoolhouse approached, however; and preparation for the event was neglected by none of the M. O. R.'s or the other girls and boys in the cast.

Friday evening would see the first production; but the intention was to give a matinee for the pupils of the three Centerport High Schools at a nominal price on Saturday morning, and then a final performance Saturday evening. From these three performances the committee hoped to gain at least a thousand dollars, and possibly half as much more. This would be a splendid addition to the somewhat slim building fund of the M. O. R.'s.

Lily Pendleton went about these days with a very self-satisfied expression of countenance and such a mysterious manner that Bobby said to her:

"Huh! you look like an old hen that's hidden her nest and thinks nobody's going to find it. What are you up to now?"

"Don't you wish you knew?" returned Lily.

Even Hester Grimes admitted that she was not in Lil's confidence. But the hints Lily dropped troubled Mother Wit.

Laura Belding had not forgotten the discovery her chum had made regarding the identity


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248 $\lambda=1.5~\mu$, after which it increases rapidly to a maximum at $\lambda=2.6~\mu$, and attains a new extraordinarily strong maximum at $\lambda=4.6$ [sic] (Langley's $\text{Y}$). According to Ångström the absorption of carbonic acid is zero at $$\lambda=0.9~\mu$$, and very weak at $\lambda=1.69~\mu$, after which it increases continuously to $$\lambda=4.6~\mu$$ and decreases again to $\lambda=6.0~\mu$. This behaviour is entirely in agreement with the values of $$\log x$$ in From the value zero at 40° ($\lambda=1.0~\mu$) it attains a sensible value ($-0.0296$) at 39°.45 ($\lambda=1.4~\mu$), and thereafter greater and greater values ($-0.0559$ at 39°.30, and $$-0.1070$$ at 39°.15) till it reaches a considerable maximum ($-0.3412$ at 39°, $\lambda=4.3~\mu$). After this point the absorption decreases (at 38°.45 $=5.6~\mu$, $\log x=-0.2035$) [sic]. According to the absorption of carbonic acid at 38°.30 and 38°.15 ($\lambda=7.1~\mu$ and $8.7~\mu$) has very great values ($\log x=-0.2438$ and $-0.3780$), whilst according to Ångström it should be insensible. This behaviour may be connected with the fact that Ångström's spectrum had a very small intensity for the larger wave-lengths. In Paschen's curve there are traces of a continuous absorption by the carbonic acid in this whole region with weak maxima at $\lambda=5.2~\mu$, $\lambda=5.9~\mu$, $$\lambda=6.6~\mu$$ (possibly due to traces of water-vapour), $\lambda=8.4~\mu$, and $\lambda=8.9~\mu$. In consequence of the strong absorption of water-vapour in this region of the spectrum, the intensity of radiation was very small in Langley's observations, so that the calculated absorption-coefficients are there not very exact (cf. above, pp. –). Possibly the calculated absorption of the carbonic acid may have come out too great, and that of the water-vapour too small in this part (between 38°.30 and 38°.0). This can happen the more easily, as in $$\text{K}$$ and $$\text{W}$$ in general increase together because they are both proportional to the "air-mass." It may be pointed out that this also occurs in the problems that are treated below, so that the error from this cause is not of so great importance as one might think at the first view.

For angles greater than 38° ($$\lambda>9.5~\mu$$) we possess no direct observations of the emission or absorption of the two gases. The sun's spectrum, according to Langley, exhibits very great absorption-bands at about 37°.50, 37°.25, 37°, and 36°.40°36°.40 [sic]. According to my calculations the aqueous vapour has its greatest absorbing power in the spectrum from 38° to 35° at angles between 37°.15 and 37°.45 (the figures for 35°.45, 35°.30, and 35°.15 are very uncertain, as they depend upon very few measurements), and the carbonic acid between 36°.30 and 37°.0. This seems to indicate that the first two absorption-bands are due to the action of water


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Page:Girls of Central High on the Stage.djvu/182

172 of the man who called himself "Pizotti." The stage director would not again attend the performance of "The Spring Road" until the day of the first production. Yet Laura believed that Lily had an understanding of some sort with him.

Governor Street, where Griff told Jess the Plornish family lived, was one of the very poorest in that part of the city, being located at the foot of the Hill and below Market Street itself.

Laura and Jess went shopping one afternoon on Market Street; and despite the fact that it was nipping cold weather, and that the street was a mass of snow-ice, save on the car tracks, they walked home. The sidewalks were slippery, and it took some caution to keep one's feet; but the chums were so sure of their balance that they stepped along quite briskly.

From Mr. Vandergriff's store they saw a poorly dressed little girl—perhaps eight years old, or so—dragging a soap box on runners. The box had several packages of groceries in it, besides a bottle of milk.

Just as the child started across Market Street there came a heavy sleigh with plumes, great robes, a pair of dapple gray horses, and a great jingling of bells. The driver did not see the


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Rh little girl with her box until it was almost too late to pull out.

It all happened in a flash! The peril was upon the child before she or anybody else realized it; and it had passed her, only smashing her sled and spilling her goods, in another moment.

The sleigh, with the horses prancing, swept on and did not even stop for its occupants to note the damage it had done. The child was left crying in the gutter, with the groceries scattered about and the milk making a white river upon the dirty ice.

Laura sprang to aid the little one in picking up her goods; but Jess exclaimed:

"Did you see that, Laura?"

"I should think I did! And they never stopped."

"But did you see who was in the sleigh?"

"No."

"It was Lil—and that man was riding with her again."

"Pizotti?" gasped Laura.

"Yes. Here! give me that bottle. I'll run across and get another bottle of milk from Mr. Vandergriff. We'll have to help the little one carry her stuff home. The little sled is smashed to smithereens."

"All right, Jess. Now, don't cry, child!" ex-