text:
The Burglar (Stringer)

E was trapped. His retreat had H been cut off. He had calculated the margin of safety with too fine a nicety, and here, at the last moment, they had him cornered.

Some one's hand had cautiously turned a key in the door, from the outside. There was no doubt about it. He was, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner within the four walls that surrounded him. He had heard the click of the lock-bar into its socket. It had clicked decisively, disquietingly, like the snap of a spring trap.

The second door, he knew, was out of the question. It had been closed and bolted from the first. The windows themselves were mullioned and grated with their deceivingly airy scroll-work of steel, shutting him in as securely as cage-bars shut in a Zoo captive. And those scrollwork gratings, opening as they did on the one-storied conservatory roof, were always kept locked. He could have told them that weeks ago, when he first began his study of their house.

This study had been a leisured and yet an elaborate one. It was Schlaum, alias Illinois Oscar, who six months before had tipped him off as to the obsolete rosewood-panelled wall-safe in the Alfred Duyster mansion. Schlaum had had the good fortune to enter the Duyster household as second-man. But an over-interrogative Central Office had learned of his intrusion and compelled him, first to a hasty migration, and later to an obligatory Middle-West exile, long before he could make his haul.

Yet he carried away with him, ironically enough, a duplicate key to the rosewood façaded wall-safe. The knowledge he had thus gained lay dormant in the mind of Gentleman Dan, alias Denver Daniel, alias Rambler Roberts, and when that worthy worked his bumper-riding way eastward with Sheeny Chi, and funds gave out, he decided to act on the tip that Schlaum had given him.

So for three weeks he had kept watch, quietly and unostentatiously, with a patience equalled only by that of the true fisherman. For three weeks he had studied the greystone house-front, the habits and movements of its owner, the location and character of its entrances, the coming and going of its servants, the hours of their retiring and rising, from the liveried coachman who “slept out” to the mild and thin-cheeked lady's-maid who dropped letters in the mail-box at the Avenue corner. And a fortified quietude of stone and brick, carrying as it did all the outward appearance of solidity, was translated for Gentleman Dan into something about as vulnerable as a ripe and succulent musk-melon.

For his weeks of careful observation equipped him with a rather serviceable fund of information. Added to this, divers sagacious deductions and certain more or less logical conclusions, it might be said that his twenty-day reconnaissance had furnished him with even a startling familiarity with regions wherein he had never set foot. It had confirmed his earlier impressions that the front of the building, with its unscreened street-door and its burglar-alarm circuit, was practically impregnable. It had served to decide him on an attack from the rear. To this end, when the chosen night arrived, a night when the master of the house was in Washington, and practically all the servants had been given a leave of absence, Gentleman Dan entered an onyx-pillared apartment-hotel one block below his actual point of attack. There he took an upholstered and many-mirrored elevator to the top floor, waited until the cage descended, and then cautiously made his escape by means of a rear window and a fire-escape. From this, with equal caution, he swung himself across a cat-teaser that surmounted the back area-fence of the Duyster lot, removing his coat and cushioning the iron spike-ends with it as he did so. Then he stood face to face with the frugal little apology of a conservatory. The soft leaded panes of this conservatory were extremely easy to cut out, and ten minutes of quiet and leisured work enabled him to push his way in between the rather sickly and attenuated tendrils of a Lord Penzance hybrid briar-rose. His crawling body crushed portions of the foliage as he wormed his way through it. In the darkness he could plainly sniff the briar smell. That smell was strangely suggestive of country lanes and woodland quietness; but it was quite lost on Gentleman Dan, for he had other things to think of. One of these was to discover the telephone wires. Another, when they were found, was to saw through them with the blade of his pocket-knife.

His next task was to remove his shoes. They were fantastically narrow-toed, military-heeled shoes of patent leather. One of them he stowed away in his left coat pocket. The other he retained in his right hand. Time and much experience had taught him that a well-ironed shoe-heel makes a safe and effective weapon. He always made it a point, in fact, to carry neither firearms nor flashlight when doing “city” work. He had no hankering to be caught with the egregious “yegg” gun on his person. He had also come to learn that jimmies and black-jacks seldom paved the way to prompt acquittals, helpful as they might sometimes be in moments of stress. His favourite tool, to take the place of the ever-damnatory “L,” was the slightly-bent king-bolt of a wagon, with the end apparently worn to a point. This seemingly innocent and easily disowned vehicular necessity gave him excellent leverage, when it came to a matter of obstinate sashes and resisting doors, and at the same time carried with it none of those malodorous associations so prejudicial in the eyes of the law. In fact, Gentleman Dan took a pride in his eccentricities of equipment, just as he rejoiced in his idiosyncrasies of professional attire. He affected no black peaked cap and face mask, but clung always to the conventional Derby hat and an inconspicuous suit of blue serge, to say nothing of the somewhat dandified accessories of dogskin gloves.

So Gentleman Dan had advanced from the conservatory to another room equally dark, with a calmness and precision which only years of practice could make possible. It took but a moment or two of groping about this room to come to a second door. This, in turn, was opened with extreme caution. Once more utter darkness confronted the intruder. He stood in the centre of this darkness, listening, inhaling like an animal on the alert and with its nose “up wind.” Then he let his troubled gaze slowly circle the blackness that engulfed him.

He had almost completed the circle before he discovered the thin pencil of yellow light, low down on his left. It was nothing more than a faint crack of luminosity along what must have been a door-bottom. He tip-toed stealthily towards this door. Then he crouched low, with his ear close to the panel, to listen.

It was at that precise moment that the door opened, suddenly and quite without warning. An oblong of light flooded the room. As it did so Gentleman Dan fell back with the outswinging door, until he was flat against the room wall. He could see a figure step out through the light, a ponderous figure in knee-breeches and stockings and a service-coat with silver buttons and yellow facings. It was nothing more than the Duyster butler with a pile of damask table-napkins over his arm. But even butlers have to be reckoned with.

Gentleman Dan waited a second or two, grasping his narrow-toed shoe as he did so. The door swung shut, and he heard the click of a light-switch.

He sprang forward the same moment that the light flooded the room, at the same moment that the startled butler's glance fell on his crouching figure.

The man in the anachronistic knee-breeches had scarcely time to cry out. Nothing more than a grunt escaped his lips. Then the well-aimed boot-heel descended on the white-fleshed, close-clipped head. It was the third blow that sent him down. The man with the boot watched him as he fell with a moan and a familiar convulsive movement or two of the body. Then he calmly and deliberately raised the boot-heel.

A fifth blow would have been unnecessary, after that fourth impact, directed with such well-chosen savagery, obliquely above the ear. The ponderous body in the silver buttons and. yellow-faced uniform no longer moved. Gentleman Dan dropped to his knee and promptly prised open the relaxed jaw, very much as a fish-dealer prises open a shell oyster. Then he knotted two of the damask table-napkins into a gag. Two minutes later the fallen servant was gagged and trussed, and rolled in half under the long table that stood in the centre of the room.

Gentleman Dan waited only long enough to glance about the four walls and switch off the lights. He surmised, in that hurried glance, that he was in the Duysters' dining-room. He made a quick mental note of the location of its doors, and passed on deeper into the strange house which lay so dark and still about him. It worried him a little to think he had to penetrate so deep into that unknown territory. For, like all adepts in his line, he never cared to operate far from the open; his ventures were as limited as those of a deep-sea diver. He knew that he had to be able to come up for air, every now and then, or his nerve would go back on him. This was especially true when he operated alone, without a “gay cat” or a “stick-up” to advise him of how the land lay. So Gentleman Dan, as he advanced, moved from room to room with all the caution at his command.

After that everything was plain sailing. He followed his path to the wall-safe as casually as a pilot follows a well-charted waterway. He knew when to veer and turn, and when to stop. Then came a moment or two of quiet exploration, another moment or two of cautious prying, the insertion of Schlaum's duplicate key, and the job was done. All that remained was to gather in the wealth that lay at his finger-tips, tie it up in a somewhat soiled yellow silk handkerchief—for among his own ilk Gentleman Dan was always spoken of as a “natty dresser”—and make his get-away. There had been no noise, for a good burglar, he held, should work as quietly as a good motor. There had been no interruption, there had not been a misstep, from first to last. He had his haul in his hand, and a clear path of escape behind him.

Then the beguiling thought of an empty boudoir or two above stairs had come to him. It had all seemed so easy. The coast was so obviously clear and the hallway so invitingly darkened; so he groped his padded way up the wide staircase, depending now largely on his sense of smell.

It was his nose, once the stairs lay behind him, that caused the intruder to turn to the last room on his right, pervaded as it was with its subtle yet indisputable atmosphere of femininity, its indescribable perfumes of refinement, its vague odours of cosmetics and cut flowers. And he was busily at work exploring the top drawer of a hard-wood cheffonnier [sic] when the door had been quietly closed and the turn of a key had sounded in the lock.

It was then that Gentleman Dan awoke to the disturbing consciousness that he was trapped, miserably and meanly trapped with his “swag” on. A wave of abject and unnerving fear went through him, as he stood there in the silence, trying to peer through the darkness with straining and quick-moving eyes. Then he quickly stooped and slipped his feet into his shoes. Effective as a boot-heel might be for secret assault, it was a very poor weapon of defence in open combat, and Gentleman Dan wanted to be quite ready for flight, should the chance come.

Then the quietness was broken by a sound. It was the sound of a step, light and quick, but unmistakably a step. Gentleman Dan retreated involuntarily, until his back was against the wall.

Then came a second sound, even more startling. It was the snap of an electric switch. The sound was followed by the instant flowering of soft-tinted globes, filling the room with light.

Then Gentleman Dan actually laughed a little; for in front of him was a woman, in a cloud-like dressing-gown of white, with ribbons of pale rose at the throat and sleeve-ends. She was still a young woman, midway between the twenties and thirties. Her skin, where the loose-fitting gown fell away from her throat and arms, was white and soft, like a child's; her eyes at the moment were unusually large. The unstudied disarray of her hair, as she stood there with one hand resting on a polished teak-wood table, only added to her attractiveness. Even Gentleman Dan could see that she was a beautiful woman,

But her appearance did not especially interest him. His attention was fixed on the magazine-revolver which she held in her right hand as she stood facing him. Yet, intently as he watched this, he also observed that his involuntary laugh of relief had startled and puzzled her. He realised disconcertingly that she was not openly afraid of him. It was almost curiosity that he saw written in her wide-eyed stare. And he saw, to his infinite relief, that she was not going to shoot. He was absurdly afraid of women; they were to be abhorred even more than house-dogs. It was always women who, armed with the bravery of utter ignorance, faced firearms as indifferently as a child would face a rattlesnake. It was always a woman who clung screaming to a burglar, forgetting that one finger-pressure could snuff her out, just as it was always a woman who clawed and scratched like a wild cat until she was either choked into quietness or pounded into “insensibility. And this woman, knowing who and what he was, had deliberately locked herself in with him.

So Gentleman Dan, being a man of reasonable wit, first ceremoniously doffed his black Derby hat and then repeated his laugh. He caught at his cue like an actor. He promptly and unequivocally became an actor, for all his career had been histrionic. He compelled himself to laugh aloud, as unconcernedly and as merrily as the situation would allow for. He moved forward a little as he laughed, carelessly, off-handedly.

Then a voice, clear noted and crisp, brought him up short. It was the woman with the automatic revolver who spoke.

“Don't move!” she cried. “Don't move, or I shall have to shoot you!”

She raised her right hand as she spoke. He could see the gleam of a diamond or two on her fingers. He could also see that she was holding the gun quite steadily, and that its barrel was pointing directly at his body. He would have preferred having it point at his head, where the chances of a hit were so much smaller. But he had an active and wholesome fear of that automatic revolver. He knew its power of spraying lead very much as a garden-hose sprays water. He would have been willing to chance a stray bullet or two, but the thought of a steady stream of projectiles directed at him with one finger-movement made him wince. And women, he knew, were always fools with firearms.

Yet he could not fathom why she had confronted him. He could not get at the bottom of that strange encounter. He could not make her out. So intuitively, for his mind was neither an analytical nor a constructive one, he felt the necessity of meeting her on her own ground, of combating her with her own weapon of mystification. So he folded his arms and gazed at her, with an assumption of admiring whimsicality, of merriment, of careless inquiry. But under his folded arms he could feel his heart thumping like a trip-hammer. He was not exactly trembling; it was a more nervous and mule-like twitching of the muscles that ran through his gaunt body. So he stood there, awaiting the next move, for the simple reason that all he could do was to wait.

It was the woman with the pale rose ribbons who made the first move. She came several steps closer to him. But the revolver was still balanced in her right hand.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded in her clear and confident voice. It was a well-modulated voice, with just the slightest tremolo of excitement in it. It was also an authoritative voice. It was the voice of a woman who was used to being answered invariably with promptness and usually with honesty.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated, this time more peremptorily. Yet at that precise moment Louise Duyster was experiencing a distinctly odd and thrilling sensation along the nape of her softly rounded neck. For she knew she was face to face with a burglar. She realised that the situation had its dangers. But what those dangers were she could not see. The primordiality of such perils were incomprehensible to her. She had never been driven to a realisation of the complexity of the social machinery which surrounded her. She knew that a bell-ring brought service, that a telephone-call brought companionship, that a word of alarm brought immediate protection. All life's procedure and tradition had made her existence an upholstered one, cushioning and muffling her against every discommoding shock. Seldom indeed had her dependence on others been brought home to her. There was even a tingle of delight in the thought that for once she was acting unaided and alone, that she was looking danger in the face without peering across footlights to find it, and then finding it only second-handed. The situation translated itself into romance. It was worth the risk. Its novelty appealed to her. So she continued to face her undecipherable opponent with the naive interest of a puzzled child. Then, for the third time, she calmly inquired the meaning of his presence there.

“Curiosity alone, madam!” was Gentleman Dan's unexpected answer, as he once more essayed his theatrically profound bow. For the man facing the pistol was crafty enough to guess at her more obvious emotions. And he, too, was not without his vanities. He knew that his profession, with its unerring instinct of nomenclature, had not called him “Gentleman Dan” for nothing. It was true he had begun life as an iron-worker, that he had laboured as a plumber's assistant, that he had been a travelling mechanic and a strike-breaker long before he had turned his hand to the calling of the “keister-cracker” and the “yeggman.” His spare figure was not ill-proportioned. About his lean and pallid face was a look which might easily have been construed as asceticism, and prolonged spells of solitary confinement had not detracted from an air of wistfulness which clung about his hungry-looking eyes. At odd times, too, his calling had imposed on him the careful study of persons in higher walks of life. His two years as a Middle-West “bank-sneak” had made it necessary for him to simulate the bearing and speech of the man of means. He had also acquired a flashy fastidiousness of apparel and certain graces of the person after a lean and dull and otherwise unprofitable winter in a Cleveland barber-shop. And during a season or two as a summer hotel waiter, where the monotony of tray-wielding was varied by numerous exercises of the pickpocket's adeptness, he had come more or less in touch with men and women who made ordinary concessions to the amenities of social intercourse. So he waited with a certain touch of almost disinterested curiosity, to see just how the woman with the pale rose ribbons would receive his Chesterfieldian sally.

It did not impress her. At least, she gave no outward sign of being impressed. She merely looked at him with wondering contempt.

“You're a thief!” she declared. He wondered suddenly just how much she had discovered below-stairs, just how much she actually knew. One glimpse of that gagged and trussed butler would put a stop to the whole business.

“Scarcely a thief!” he had the temerity to correct her. She tried to cut him short with a gesture. But he went blandly on: “For, as you see, I have taken nothing!”

“But you intended to take something!” was her quick retort. He had already measured the distance between them, and was watching every movement of her hands, waiting for his chance.

“But, madam, if that was my mission, why should I have taken nothing?” He swept his arm about the richly laden dresser with its arctic glitter of cut-glass and silver. “And with all this wealth lying so close about me?”

He knew, at once, that she had not discovered the broken safe and the butler. A puzzled look crossed her face. She was examining him more intently.

He played his next card by forcing a wistful and melancholy smile to his lips: it was a smile which had done considerable misleading in its time. He was helped out not a little by his etiolated appearance. Certain photophobiac habits of life, not to mention that facial peculiarity known as “prison-pallor,” succeeded in lending to his countenance a beguiling air of delicacy.

The woman in white gave a sudden and audible gasp.

“I know!” she cried; “it's the Romney! You came after the Romney!”

Now Gentleman Dan was not quite sure what a Romney was. So he decided to say nothing. Yet something expectant in her face, something almost pleasurable, led him to feel that it would be bad policy to enlighten her as to the error of her belief. She wanted to believe it was the Romney. Of that he was sure. So he closed his lips, with the sigh of a stoic, and did his best to look inscrutable.

He watched her as she crossed the room to the push-button. But she was very clever about it, much cleverer than he had expected. Never once did she forget the revolver in her fingers or take her eyes from his face. He could even hear the prolonged purr of the bell, subterranean and muffled, as she stood with her finger against the button. He wondered, with a nauseating sinking of the diaphragm, if there was any one besides the trussed butler who was expected to answer that summons. He could hear his heart beat as the seconds dragged away. But no one came to the door.

It was soon plain to the eye that this fact was causing Louise Duyster some concern. She watched her opponent, with sidelong intentness, as she waited, and shot a sudden question at him over her shoulder, a little contemptuously.

“How did you intend getting it away? And how were you going to tell it from the Gainsborough copy? Or the Corot?”

Gentleman Dan was at once enlightened. The Romney was a picture. He had once “yegged it” with an old Adam Worth gang forger who at different times had spoken of “Little Adam's” coup against another Gainsborough. So light came to him. He saw that she was demanding largeness of him, that she was raising him above petty thievery into the realms of the romantic. He had no wish to disillusionize her. So he remained adequately inscrutable of face. In the meantime, however, he was frenziedly sounding for his biggest and most impressive words. Then he once more forced his calm and quizzical smile.

“Might not even I have some slight appreciation of Art?” he mildly inquired, with a pretence at a calmness which was very far from him.

“How refreshing!” murmured the woman in white. Her tone was dangerously near a scoffing one, yet there was a note of curiosity in it. She crossed slowly to a dark-wooded writing-table. On this stood a desk telephone-transmitter. She quickly lifted the instrument to the farther end of the table. But her eyes never left the face of the man who was watching her, even when her left hand lifted the green-corded wire and “plugged in” on the wall-extension. He could see that it was a familiar movement with her. He could also see her lift the receiver from the hook, speak into the instrument, and then impatiently rattle the receiver-hook again. He watched her, still smiling, for he knew there would be no answer to her call. He could afford to be nonchalant.

His attitude, in fact, was more and more piquing the woman at the writing-table. It surprised her that he should make no movement towards escape. It puzzled her that he should betray no desire for a prompt and unequivocal freedom. She even ceased to worry over the fact that her 'phone-call remained unanswered. She did not altogether regret that they were to be a little longer alone. The entire experience was so novel, so dramatic, so rich in possibilities for future recountal!

It relieved Gentleman Dan to see that she was vaguely titillating in the situation, that she was studying him with that same confident curiosity with which a beribboned and over-petted lap-dog regards an intruding and unkempt street cur. Louise Duyster had even inwardly remarked that her visitor's linen was not quite immaculate. She was debating if it would be seemly to offer him some of her husband's. Instead, she asked him if he wouldn't prefer sitting down.

He thanked her, punctiliously, and after an uncertain glance about the room, chose a chair and sat in it. But in that glance he had done more than look for a seat. He had quietly estimated certain distances and weighed certain chances.

“Why did you want the Romney?” the woman in white was asking of him.

“For no particular reason,” he answered.

“Then why did you come here after it? Why did you take such risks to get it?” Her conception of the criminal was an ardent, imaginative one, She knew the type only through the pink-tinted glasses of Broadway's politer melodramas.

“Let's call it the pure love of the game!” he suavely suggested. He could see the flash of appreciation in her clear and wide-opened eyes. She was trying to put herself in his place. He wasn't the sort of sneak-thief who carried off rings and silverware. He was above that. There was something appealing in the thought of trying to capture an old master. It took on the spirit of a hazardous adventure.

“How could you have carried it away?” she asked, with her inconsequential abruptness.

“Very simply,” he told her, remembering certain things which he had picked up in his earlier days. 'You simply take a pocket-knife and run it along the inside of the picture-frame. Then you roll up the canvas. And, providing you meet no radiant ladies in white, you walk away with it under your arm!”

“How interesting!” said the wondering woman at the writing-table. “And would you mind telling me if you—er, if you always choose a more or less costly painting as the object of your attack?”

“I rather run to Art!” he said, with his calm and modest smile.

She laughed this time, quite openly, careless with a splendid contempt. That laugh made him look up with a start.

“Art for Art's sake, as it were!” she suggested.

Still again he wondered why she was so sure of herself, why she should be so offhanded and at home.

“I suppose it's really a sort of intoxication?” she was inventively asking him—“a sort of passion, like gambling, or smoking? A sort of craving for excitement? A hunger to take big risks, just for the sake of the risk?”

Gentleman Dan agreed with her that it was, even while he knew it was caused by a different sort of hunger, the sort of hunger that a decent fifteen-cent meal could usually knock galley-west! He smiled a little at the rhapsodical thought that his activities were in any way identified with glory. He had his rooming-house cot to pay for, his drinks to buy, his grafting “bulls” to appease. He knew there wasn't much glory in it. He might have told her that no “slough grafter” and “con man” takes to the game for the game's sake, but is driven into it as cattle are driven into a stockyard corral. He knew they were all starved and lashed and hounded into it, as rats are harried into a sewer. He was in it because he had to eat, because he had to keep warm, because he had to wear clothes, when he had lost the trick of earning them. But he had no intention of pricking her pretty bubbles of illusion. He noticed that she was smiling again, with the ironic deference of an assured superiority.

“Isn't it true that gentlemen of your calling read the society columns to find out people's movements? What jewels they are wearing, and all that sort of thing?”

Gentleman Dan was able to return her ironic smile.

“I was not altogether ignorant of the fact, madam, that your husband had occasion to take this afternoon's train for Washington.”

“That's very interesting!” she said, with meditative impersonality. Her earnest and inquiring eyes were once more studying his face, his long, melancholy, almost contemplative face that so reminded her of Dürer's portrait of himself.

“And I was equally aware of the fact that there are several imperfect stones in the third strand of your dog-collar. One stone, in fact, is not genuine.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have no personal or active interest in such things, of course. But I think your jeweller will confirm my opinion to-morrow, if you care to consult him.”

It was marvellous! As marvellous as crystal-gazing and spirit-rapping! Louise Duyster's eyes were bright with something more than interest, with something more than amusement. She was luxuriating in a new world, without even stepping from her boudoir. She was face to face with all the excitement of the slumming-party without the inconvenience of leaving her own white and golden walls. It was drama enough for a month. And she could see that she was quite herself by this time. A spirit of genial audacity crept over her. He was almost a gentleman. He had not been rude. He had been very nice about it. She even began to wonder what ill-luck had started him in such a life. At the precise moment she was wondering this, Gentleman Dan was wondering how she would look when they happened to find that dog-collar of hers in his pocket.

Suddenly she looked up at him with one of her engaging smiles.

“I wonder if you're hungry? If you wouldn't enjoy a bite of supper—with me?” Her last two words were an hesitating afterthought, an impulse of recklessness which sent a tingle up and down her delicate body. Deep in her own mind she was already dramatising future narratives of her adventure, over tables quietly prepared for bridge for four.

“That would be a very great pleasure!” replied Gentleman Dan, with a fervour that was not altogether affectation. For he felt that this new move would give him the chance he was watching and waiting for. And he had been worried by the thought that time was passing, precious time. But now there was sure to be an unguarded moment, a moment when he could turn the tables on her

Then he remembered the butler. He sickened a little at the thought that she might make him go below with her and stand face to face with discovery.

He looked up at her searchingly, wondering how he could withdraw, how he could avoid this unpalatable meal. But he did not speak. For a sudden sound sent a cold sweat over his startled body. It was the sound of a knock, quick and light, on the closed door.

“Come in!” cried the woman at the table, in her clear-noted soprano. The next moment she remembered the locked door, and was quickly crossing the room, her white drapery fluttering about her like a silver-birch tree shaken with wind. Gentleman Dan watched her turn the key in the lock and then recross the room to her old position beside the writing-table.

As she did so a second woman stepped quietly into the room. She wore a brown hat and veil, but her hands were at her head removing these, even as she stepped hurriedly in through the door. The natural pallor of her face was reddened a little, either by running or a high wind. There was a look of anxiety in her eyes as they passed from the woman at the writing-table to the strangely dressed man opposite her, and then back to the woman again. For a second or two no one spoke.

But Gentleman Dan was watching this later intruder with all his eyes. He knew, the moment the veil was off the thin-cheeked face, that the newcomer was the Duysters' maid, the lady's-maid who should have been visiting with her sister in Brooklyn.

“I tried to telephone, ma'am,” she began, with troubled deference. “I tried and tried, but they couldn't get the house!”

“Yes?” said the woman at the writing-table.

“So I thought it best to come back, right away. I didn't know but what something was wrong!”

Again the maid's eyes travelled questioningly to the strange figure in the chair. “I—I thought something might have happened, ma'am!”

Gentleman Dan was crafty enough to feel that the woman in white was not altogether overjoyed at this unlooked-for deliverance. There was something almost like annoyance on her face. But he watched every move and glance between mistress and maid, to make sure no secret message was being given and taken.

“There is no need for alarm, Clements,” the unruffled lady of the house explained. “Nothing has happened!”

She may have been explanatory, but Gentleman Dan could see that she would never be apologetic. He also began to see that he had not quite reached the end of his rope, as he had feared. She was actually lying for him: she was trying to shield him.

“I want you to bring up something to eat; cold meat and things; and a bottle of Burgundy!”

“In this room, ma'am?” inquired the bewildered maid.

“To this room, please,” was the quiet answer. “And dishes for two!”

Still again Gentleman Dan thought of the butler, and still again he realised how closely peril hung over him. All he could do was to wait his chance. And when it came there would be no dilly-dallying.

He did not move until the door closed behind the departing maid. Then he turned to his persecutor, for, little as she imagined it, she was indeed persecuting him.

“What do you intend to do?” he asked, with a quaver of anxiety in his voice. It was hard for him to keep his dignity, to sustain the rôle.

“What do you intend to do?” equivocated his companion in deception.

He sat in deep thought for a moment or two. Then he forced a nonchalant smile to his lips. “Since you are safe and the Romney is safe, I assume it would not be unreasonable to make the triangle a complete one!”

Still again the woman laughed. “I see you don't trust me,” she said, and her glance was without enmity.

“Pardon me!” murmured the burglar. “I trust you completely, implicitly. You are a brave woman, And all truly brave women are generous.”

She was glad he hadn't spoken of her appearance, that he hadn't dragged in the odious personal factor, That would have made it quite different. She could see he had the fine taste to attempt no uncouth coquetries—Gentleman Dan, indeed, had never been a “moll-buzzer”—and she was not without a vague gratitude for the impersonality of his address. Something about the look of patience, of humility, of suffering, on his thin face touched her into a gush of pity. A quick little thrill of impulse ran through her body. She put the revolver on the table. She knew that she could trust her instincts. The world had not used him honestly. He had never been given a chance.

“I'm going to trust you!” she said, with sudden conviction. 'I'm going to trust you, because I know you're a gentleman at heart.”

Then she deliberately opened the writing-table drawer, placed the revolver in it, and deliberately closed it.

Gentleman Dan did not move. He was too puzzled to stir. There was something so incomprehensible about the entire situation that he could not even think. He was not used to studying high-spirited women at close range. He was not adroit in tracing the intricacies of super-feminine psychology.

Then reason came back to him. He bowed a deep bow of gratitude. But all the while he was wondering just when the maid below-stairs was going to stumble on the butler and give the alarm. He knew his chances were every second growing slimmer and slimmer.

The intoxication of another benignant impulse was sweeping through the woman at the writing-table. She glanced towards the door, almost guiltily. “I'm going to give you some money,” she said. “Enough to keep you from—enough to make you avoid—er—danger like this. Then I want you to come to me here, to-morrow afternoon. For I think I can help you. I know I can help you!”

A miraculous dull flush crept up through Gentleman Dan's thin-blooded face. Only a thief, a professional thief, could have comprehended the source of his shame, his humiliation. But the woman in white saw that flush, and she at once knew that she had not been mistaken. He was really a man of sensibilities, of finer feelings.

Then a sullen joy suddenly took the place of Gentleman Dan's shame, for he saw that the woman had risen and was crossing the room to her dressing-table. She was actually leaving the accursed revolver shut up in the drawer. He rose to his feet with an apparent murmur of protest.

The woman, stooping over the low dressing-table, stopped him with a gesture of her white hand. She took up a gold-meshed purse and opened it. As she did so Gentleman Dan's trained ear caught the sound of a muffled call from below-stairs. It was then that he wheeled about and faced the woman in white.

She saw him coming, and looked up as he stepped towards her. Her muslin-clouded body was still a little stooped over the low-topped dressing-table, and the purse was still in her hand.

Then, even before she could see the movement, the bony, clenched first of the burglar struck like a mallet on her face.

She went down, with a look of startled wonder still in her eyes, a look of inarticulate protest against treatment which she could in no way understand. She fell full length on the floor, and lay there without moving.

Gentleman Dan turned her over with his foot. Then he stooped and caught up the gold-meshed purse, which her fallen body had first hidden from sight. Then he tore the rings from her limp fingers, snatched up the little jewelled watch from the writing-table as he crossed the room, switched out the lights, and dodged into the darkness of the hall outside. He darted for the stairs and went down the wide staircase three steps at a time, for the lower newel-post lights were now burning. Then he wheeled about, before an open door on his right where he could see clothes hanging in a deep hall-closet. He picked out a hat of English felt, made sure it fitted him, threw an Oxford-grey paddock-coat over his arm, and walked sedately and quietly out of the front door, down the grey stone steps, and round the corner into the Avenue.

title: The Burglar (Stringer)


text: Talk:The Burglar (Stringer)

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

title: Talk:The Burglar (Stringer)


text:
A Woman of the North

OOD-BYE!" cried little Lizette, standing out in the open door, with her breath turning white in the cold air.

It was not often, in that lonely bush-land, that she saw a woman. She had never seen one with cheeks so clear and crimson—like the last sunlight over the western pine-trees, she said afterwards, and eyes as deep and brown as the little pools in the rock-clefts, where the frogs croak and gurgle in the spring when the last snow is gone. "Good-bye! Adieu!" cried the child once more, waving her little red hand, while the woman turned from the clearing into the white roadway.

"Adieu!" called back Jeanne Bourdeau, as her moccasins crunched on the hard snow of the roadway. Her clear voice echoed and re-echoed across the clearing. Then the child standing in the doorway shivered with the cold. She took a last look, and went in and closed the door. She put another huge piece of wood in the box-stove, though its sides were already a dull red from the mass of glowing coals within it, and then warmed her hands in the cloud of steam that spurted from the kettle. She went quietly over to the side of the little bed where her mother lay, still weak from child-birth. Both mother and child were sleeping, so little Lizette turned to the window, and watched the stranger, who had come into her life for one momentous hour, as she passed down the snow-covered road and disappeared over the hill-crest, towards the pine-lands.

But Jeanne Bourdeau herself was not thinking of little Lizette; for she paused when she came to the little hollow at the eastern edge of the lonely pine-lands, and gazed long and thoughtfully down the road that wound through the forest, already growing dim with the afternoon twilight of a Canadian mid-winter.

The sun was low, and the glow of the white snow made her eyes ache. For a moment she thought it would be better to turn back; for it was a long way to Pierre's log-cabin. She knew it would be a bitterly cold night. Far to the east she could already see the twinkling lights of the village of Silver Rapids; and she knew this lonely little hollow would be the rubicon of her woman's life. In the west, above the dark fringe of the pine-tops, burned a long line of clear, wintry crimson. Higher up in the sky it turned to tawny gold, and then to a tranquil, brooding opal. But its seeming quiet serenity made it none the less austere and pitiless. Far over the hills on the north the quiver of a little, indistinct halo showed where the Northern Lights, later in the night, would come and gleam. Jeanne remembered that Little Crow, the old half-breed, had told her they were the spirits of dead chiefs fighting their enemies. The child Lizette had seen the first glimmer of the Lights from the window, and said they were the angels who come away from Heaven every winter-time to gather handsful of snow to throw down to the wicked spirits who were burning forever and forever and forever in hell. The old Curé had told her so. Jeanne wondered which was true.

It was very quiet and lonely. The only sound was the crunching of her feet on the dry, crisp snow. The early twilight seemed tinged with the strangeness, the mystery, of the silent North. To one who had not learned to know it the silence might have seemed like the silence of death. To the heart of Jeanne it seemed holy. An old, half-remembered line was running through her mind again and again:

She walked on, still half-irresolute, taking in the scene before her with no gesture or expression, for she was a daughter of that legendary, mysterious Northland which teaches one to feel but never to express. So the silence touched her wondering heart with a strange, indefinite awe. She could not help fervently crossing herself, and muttering the pater noster which old Father Sebastian had taught her when she was a little child in the village of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, the little town where the pilgrims come to drink of the wondrous waters of the Holy Spring, down where the blue St. Lawrence widens into the bluer lake that nurses the Isle of Orleans.

Perhaps Jeanne was touched by some reminiscent influence of the silent twilight, for as she walked along she began to muse on the memories that clustered about that little prayer. In those old days, she remembered, she often used to repeat it, for that was before she had drifted away from the faith, and long before she had come with Pierre Delorme, her old-time paramour, from Beaupré into this wild country.

Pierre had been a bad man, she knew, and a scoffer at the faith, and a hater of the church; and she had heard bad things said of him. Yet when he was a brown-eyed boy at old Beaupré they had played together on the rafts down by the river. And one's heart often plays one strange tricks. She had loved him all her life; and long ago she had prayed in secret before the shrine of Ste. Anne, and kissed the sacred finger-bone of the mother of the Virgin, so that Pierre's heart might be made pure. She had even climbed, again and again, the Scala Sonata at Beaupré, on her knees, muttering a prayer on every step that she might in time lead him back to the faith. She had never told Pierre. He would have laughed with his merry laugh—and she did not like to hear him scoff.

But when Pierre had broken the arm of the young Englishman with one blow of his fork-handle as he was working in the hay fields at the riverside, for calling her a wicked name because Pierre had lived with her before they were married, she went with him from Beaupré, and came across the Maurice into this lonely land where few men ventured, except the lumbermen and the voyageurs, and where no one would know of their old life. The pine-lands were thick with timber, waiting for the woodman's axe, but the summers were short, and the winters long and lonely. But, at last, just before the child was born, Pierre sent to the mission at Silver-Rapids for the minister, and on just such a night as this, two years ago, they were married; for Pierre had said it would be better for the child's sake. As for Pierre himself, he did not care, for was he not always a scoffer?

Then after 'Tite Pierre had come to them, Pierre had done her the great wrong. He had left her and stolen away with Ninon Baby, the woman who was known by every lumber-man who frequented Silver-Rapids, when his winter's work was done and his pockets were heavy with money.

It was the old blood coming out, she had said. So when the two ran away together, just as the snows were coming on, she followed after them; and the child died. Then she cursed him with her own lips, and soon after she met him face to face in the streets of Notre Dame des Anges, and there he told her he was tired of her. That had touched her pride; and she said no more, but turned and left him.

Then she recalled how she went back through the snow to Silver-Rapids, and how the minister at the mission had taken her into his own house to nurse his wife with the terrible cough.

Later, when they told her Ninon Baby had died in the heart of the winter, and Pierre had gone back to live alone in his own home among the pine-lands, she had said nothing. The minister said it was the judgment of God. But Jeanne knew better. It was simply because the woman had been born across the sea in sunny France, where the winter does not creep into one's bones and give one a cough, and then it is all over.

Jeanne remembered how she used to sing, at that time, the boat songs of the Canadian voyageurs and snatches of old French folk songs, to show them she was happy. But she had often broken off in the middle of her verse to look from the window towards the west, where the pine-lands were. Yet she had stayed on through the brief but golden summer and the fragrant, dreamy norland autumn and deep into the long, silent winter, until the wife of the minister had died. Then he came and told her he was going back to his old home in England. And she herself stood long at the window that looked out on the sun going down over the pine-lands, and at last said that she, too, was going back to Pierre.

The woman was aroused from her reverie by the sound of footsteps echoing along the quiet road, and she looked back over her shoulder. It seemed to her she knew that tall, spare figure that came swinging down the road with its slouching Indian tread. She stopped and looked back once more. Yes: it was Little Crow, as he was ironically called, the half-breed. She stopped and waited for him.

The dark, stolid face betrayed no surprise. "Ah! Jeanne Bourdeau," he said as he came up to her. "Where do you go?"

Jeanne hesitated a moment, and then said: "Back to my husband."

"Good!" half-grunted the half-breed. Little Crow, like most people about Silver-Rapids, had picked up her story. Jeanne had no heart to talk, so the strange pair walked on in silence, until the half-breed stopped and looked towards the north, where a straggling path stretched away from the roadway through the bush.

He pointed to the north. "I must go here," he said. "Pierre is a bad man. But these women, they twist you round their fingers like prairie grass. It is good. You have the red lights of the north in your cheeks. Pierre is no fool!" And saying this the half-breed turned into the deep snow that lay upon the forest path, and plodded away. He seemed a strange figure, moving across the blank, white background. Jeanne stopped and looked after him. She thought of little Lizette, and then of the half-breed, and it seemed strange to her that people should come together for a little while, and then pass away again for ever. The world was so big! And beyond Quebec there was Manitoba, and beyond that the Great West, and then, she had heard, was the sea. If one had only a little home somewhere, that one might not think about this big world!

But night was coming on, the night of a northern Canadian winter, and Jeanne knew what that meant. The thought of a little log-house she knew of between two hills among the pines came into her mind, and caused her to quicken her steps.

The sleigh-tracks grew fainter and fainter, and the crunching of the snow-crust under her feet echoed and re-echoed along the desolate little road between the gloomy trees. At one time it sounded like the crying of children; then again it sounded like wolf-barks to her. Again, she thought it seemed like the crying of her baby on the night that—but she banished the thought.

She trilled a French-Canadian song Pierre used to sing when he wooed her long ago down on the blue St. Lawrence. A reverberating chorus of antiphonal notes came echoing back to her along the tree-lined road, so mellowed and sweetened that she marvelled at the richness of her own voice. The keen, cold air, exhilarating as the wine they used to make down at Beaupré in the early autumns, made her strong heart beat light and quick. So she went on, calling out a few notes of her song at a time, and then waiting for the echo to die out along the road.

Again and again she did this, as she crunched along, and stopped to listen half-childishly to one long, clear echo. Yet, as she listened, another sound came from among the pines. It was a low cry, like the groan of a thing in pain. A tingle of fear ran along her limbs. She was not a coward, yet she was feminine. She was a woman who had been made brave by solitude, and courageous by suffering. She listened again,—still the cry, low, despairing, terrible. It was the second time that night Jeanne crossed herself.

Then she floundered into the loose snow, and pushed through the drifted banks among the pines. She stopped and called. There was no reply; and she pierced still deeper into the dark forest twilight. She was on the point of calling out again, when she suddenly came upon it. And it was Pierre, her husband, pinned down on his back by a fallen pine-tree that lay across his thighs, crushing him down in the snow and frozen earth.

Jeanne understood it all in one moment. As soon as her quick eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she saw his axe lying near him, just beyond his reach. It was the old trick,—a falling tree striking on a smaller one, and swerving. The entrapped man had beaten the snow with his arms, in his frenzied despair, to keep out the cold a little longer. But now he was lying exhausted, quietly moaning. And the winter night was stealing on.

Jeanne's first thought was to take the axe and cut through that part of the tree-trunk which pinned him down. She was a daughter of the wilderness, and had been taught to handle an axe, even before she had learned the use of a needle. Yet she was only a woman. On second thoughts she determined otherwise.

She went over to him and dropped on her knees beside him in the snow. Her wife's heart ached for him.

"Pierre!" she said, bending low over him; "Pierre!"

To the half-conscious Pierre it sounded like the voice of an angel. He slowly opened his eyes.

"Jeanne! Mon Dieu! is it you, Jeanne?" he cried feebly, for the cold had crept into his poor body.

"Yes; it is Jeanne." Then, after a pause; "Pierre, you will die."

Pierre's only reply was a groan.

"Is it well with you, Pierre? Are you all ready to die now?" said the woman bending over him.

"Mother of Christ, I cannot die!" groaned the man, as he tore the crust of the snow until blood oozed from his finger-ends and stained the white ground.

"But you must, Pierre," said Jeanne quietly and solemnly. Then she went on: "You have been a bad husband to me, Pierre, in your time; and you did me a wrong; but that is all over now. And I think I love you more than ever. So, after you are gone, I will go and live in your log-house; and I will put the cross over your grave; and I will pray for you,—and perhaps you will wake up in heaven. And after you die to-night, if the mother of Christ brought one angel to you, and her name was Jeanne, would you still curse her, and say you were tired of her?"

"Ah, Jeanne! I was mad to do it then! Mon Dieu! you see I pay for it; I thought it all out to-night. I have been a bad man; and now I pay for it, and so did she. I was coming to you, Jeanne, on the day of the New Year; I swear I was coming to you, but I waited because I was afraid. But now it is too late—too late. Voila, the pain is going, and I—I will sleep."

"But remember, Pierre! You will promise to be good to me in heaven, after you die? Will you promise me?" aid Jeanne, shaking him to keep him awake.

"Yes—yes—in heaven—after I die," the man repeated wearily.

"Then say this prayer after me, Pierre, for your soul!" And she bent still lower over him and repeated her pater noster. The only reply was the falling of his arm and the sinking of his head back in the snow. He was sleeping the frozen sleep that has taken the pain from many a northern heart.

Jeanne had played her part. When she saw the state he was in she started up in alarm from the snow. She ran across the small clearing out into the roadway towards the little house between the hills, a long half-mile away. She was surprised at her own calm cruelty. It might be already too late to save him. She was panting when she reached the house and broke open the door with a stick of cordwood. Inside everything was drearily cold and dark. But it did not take Jeanne's deft hand long to make a fire in the box-stove. She ransacked the little cupboards and found a huge flask of brandy. Then she gathered together the blankets and buffalo-robes and skins, and spread them out before the fire. From one of the out-houses she took a light hand-sleigh and a keen-toothed cross-cut saw. She knew she would need them both before her work was finished. She flung a couple of robes over the sleigh, and in twenty minutes from the time she had been quietly praying for the soul of the freezing man, there rang out on the clear night air the music of an axe clanging against the pine-trunk that lay across her husband's body. She had forced some brandy down his throat, and had thrust a robe partially under his body, and flung one over him. The thought that she had wasted precious time in her woman's whim made her work with a desperate energy. She took the saw, when she could chop no more, and watched with a strange pleasure how the sharp teeth bit into the green wood.

At last she was through; the last stroke was given, and she sat back in the snow, panting and trembling. The long end of the pine-tree settled scarcely an inch or two, so she knew no bones would be broken or crushed, for all the weight of the tree had not rested on the man's body. The short pieces of bole over Pierre's legs was not difficult to roll away... Jeanne almost laughed when she saw what a sadly hacked-up stump it was; and yet there came a time, years afterwards, when she, and Pierre, and 'Tite Pierre, their second boy, stood by a certain pine-log in the clearing, while Pierre laughingly showed the child what an axe-woman his mother had been in the old days.

But Jeanne had to swallow a scalding draught of brandy before she could lift the rigid Pierre upon the sleigh, and after that she dragged him slowly and wearily across the snow-covered hills to his home. She could scarcely lift him on the bed. She thawed out his frozen feet with snow, and gave him brandy mixed with boiling water from the kettle singing on the stove, and rolled him up in hot blankets, and when everything was done she sat down and waited. Then she went over nearer to him, and sat on the bedside, listening to his heavy breathing. And as she watched, sleep crept over her, the tired head fell wearily forward, and she remembered no more.

When Jeanne awoke the wintry morning sunlight was streaming hazily through the little frosted window panes. The fire in the stove had sunk down to a mass of gray ashes. But in its heart Jeanne still found a bed of coals; and Pierre still slept. She bent over him and felt his brow. As she expected, it was hot and feverish; but his breathing was deep and regular. She knew it would take a few days to bring him round. But she felt that all was well, for she had nursed Father Ignace back to life when they had found him in the snow after the great blizzard of the winter before she left Ste. Anne de Beaupré. And Pierre was to Father Ignace what an iron bar is to a little candle.

Jeanne's arms were stiff, and her shoulders were sore, but there was a happiness lurking about her red lips as she arranged her thick brown hair before the little cracked looking-glass. She set about her household duties with a light heart. She examined the blankets and robes that covered Pierre, and tucked him up again and again, with needless care. She prepared gruels and broths for him, and when she could do nothing more sat and watched his face. All that was woman in her brooded over him tenderly, even maternally. And her heart seemed so light she might have carolled a song, but that she feared to awaken him. She remembered how the wife of the minister at Silver Rapids had called her a strange woman. Jeanne knew her secret was not a deep one, and she blushed half-girlishly as she looked down at the slumbering man.

At last the sleeper moved uneasily and sighed. She went over to him, her heart beating tumultuously. She touched his forehead lightly, and found it cooler. The touch had been as soft as a falling snowflake, but it awakened Pierre.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her with a vague, wondering gaze. One faint cry broke from his lips: "Jeanne!"

"Hush! hush! Pierre," said Jeanne, smiling over him, "you are in heaven now, and the mother of Christ might hear you."

Pierre was silent. At first he could not think; but slowly, deliciously, it all dawned on him. The kettle was singing on the stove, the winter sunlight was streaming through the window. There was a pain in his bruised limbs, and an ache in his poor frost-bitten feet that he knew too well was in no wise celestial. And Jeanne still stood smiling over him with her sorrowful, reproving, tender face and her loving, saintly eyes.

"Remember your promise, Pierre. You swore to love me in heaven, after you died. And the old Pierre died last night out in the cold; and so, Pierre, can we not both be in heaven now, and leave the old sins behind?" And she bent over him and said little love-speeches to him in French, lapsing back into the language of their childhood, just as a happy lover falls into baby-talk.

Pierre did not reply. But the little snow-birds that hopped and twittered on the window-sill that mid-winter morning looked in and saw a strange thing. They saw a man reach up with his arms and draw a smiling woman down on his breast. And if they had listened at the window later in the day, they might have heard the woman singing a quaint old French-Canadian love-song, but they would scarcely know it was the song her lover used to sing when he wooed her in the little village of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, down on the blue St. Lawrence.

Arthur Stringer

title: A Woman of the North


text: Talk:A Woman of the North

title: Talk:A Woman of the North


text:
Page:North Macedonia Foreign Assistance Fact Sheet, July 2021.pdf/1

 {|style="width:100%" United States assistance coordinated by the Office of the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia (ACE) has boosted efforts in North Macedonia to strengthen rule of law and combat corruption. The United States strongly supported North Macedonia's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and U.S. assistance continues to foster interoperability with the Alliance. U.S. assistance supports North Macedonia’s path to Euro-Atlantic integration, including European Union (EU) accession; fosters competent, transparent, and accountable governance; and engages civil society, youth, and the private sector to help shape policy, monitor reforms, and expand the country’s economic and democratic successes. U.S. technical assistance is helping to diversify North Macedonia’s energy sources, including solar energy in its power generation, and to develop appropriate laws related to open-market access, allowing accelerated deployment of renewable-energy projects. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of North Macedonia mounted a prompt and thorough response that is supported by over $4 million in U.S. funding to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.
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 * style="font-size:75%"|United States Department of State Office of the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia (ACE) Foreign Assistance Fact Sheet, July 2021
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In FY 2020, U.S. assistance helped civil society organizations (CSOs) reduce corruption, domestic violence, and violations of human rights in North Macedonia. With U.S. support, CSOs conducted 133 on-site court monitoring visits, analyzing the implementation of domestic laws and international fair trial standards, thus promoting citizen’s ability to monitor access to justice. The CSO coalition published five policy briefs on corruption and 10 investigative pieces on nepotism and corruption in the judiciary, court inefficiencies, and implementation of the Law on Whistleblowers, which resulted in stronger justice-sector institutions. U.S. assistance helped youth groups combat disinformation, which malign actors exploit to divide the population, and which impedes nation-building. When snap elections were held mid-pandemic in July 2020, U.S. assistance prepared the State Election Commission to carry out safe and transparent elections by training the electoral administration on how to use protective measures at the polling stations, raise awareness among voters to stay safe during the voting process, and ensure the right voting protocols were in place. As a result, there were no new COVID-19 clusters resulting from the election voting.

U.S. assistance improves the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of law enforcement and judicial institutions. This includes bolstering border security and efforts to control illicit trade. U.S. assistance programs in the areas of rule of law and good governance include efforts to enhance the capacity of the police through the implementation of modern training strategies that reflect international best practices; enhance investigative and prosecutorial effectiveness through the implementation of investigative task forces; and implement effective community engagement activities. Assistance was also provided to reduce corruption and increase transparency through the expansion of a digital document management tool to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MOIA) and accreditation of the Police Training Center. The Digital Police Management System (DPMS) has been incorporated into the MOIA Archive/Mail Office and the newly established Organized and Serious Crime Department Trafficking in Persons Task Force. Replacing the MOIA’s paper-based system by processing reports and intelligence, this DPMS ensure investigations can be properly and efficiently managed.

U.S. support promotes public-private dialogue on economic policies and a legal framework conducive to private sector competitiveness and growth in North Macedonia. U.S. assistance facilitates private sector access to finance and business support services, particularly for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The United States helped 13 business support organizations (BSOs) and 3,267 MSMEs. Through this support, BSO membership increased by 11,130 members. Further, 56 MSMEs obtained $42 million in credit from financial institutions and the U.S. leveraged over $9 million from 10 large companies in the apparel, dairy, and food processing sectors to improve productivity in the supply chain. U.S. loan guarantees facilitated 171 loans to farmers and agribusinesses, valued at over $2.2 million. Additionally, U.S. programs help preserve cultural assets and improve conditions for tourism. U.S. assistance is reducing barriers to regional and global trade, in part through improved value chain competitiveness in line with EU standards.


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 use of the one who desires it, its distinctive feature, under capitalism, is its exchange value. A thing is a commodity only so long as it has exchange value, and it is no longer a commodity when its use value asserts itself, i.e., when appropriated for use in whatever form or degree by the consumer. The use value of a thing is inherent in the thing itself in relation to the person using it, whereas the exchange value is a definite economic relation, it is essentially a social product, and depends for all its peculiar attributes on the prevalent mode of production. "One cannot tell, by the taste of wheat, whether it has been produced by a Russian serf or French peasant or English capitalist." Its use value remains the same, however produced. But its exchange value in a given society will depend on the forms of production prevalent in that society.

Capitalist wealth is an aggregation of exchange values, and in order to understand capitalism, the nature of exchange value and the distribution of commodities must be explained. Take any factory product which is the characteristic form of production under capitalism. It was produced in a factory by a large number of working men, hired by an employer or manufacturer. It was then sent to the wholesale dealer, whence it went to the retailer, who sold it to the consumer. There may have been more or less middlemen between the production and the use of the things by the consumer, but all who took part in its production and distribution did so, not because of any need or love of the thing itself, but in order to make a profit for themselves. Whence did this profit for each of them come? We assume, of course, that all concerned are quite honest, and that each paid the fair market price for the article. Each received his share from the purchase price paid by the consumer or from the exchange value of the article. The exchange value of the article first manifests itself in the price paid for it by the wholesaler to the manufacturer. Value ,it must be remembered, is the cause of price, but is not identical with it, and they do not even always coincide in amount. Things may be bought cheap or dear, that is below or above their value, for whilst value is determined by the social conditions of productonproduction [sic], price is determined by individual motives, the given


text: Index:The Northwest Coast; Or, Three Years' Residence In Washington Territory.djvu


text: Works of Jules Verne/Five Weeks in a Balloon/Chapter 1


text: Works of Jules Verne/Five Weeks in a Balloon/Chapter 2


text: Works of Jules Verne/Five Weeks in a Balloon/Chapter 3


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 estimate of its value by or to the individual, the haggling of the market, supply and demand, and so forth. The average of the prices paid for an article is its market price which will always be governed by the social value of the substance sold.

What is this social value common to all commodities? It is human labour. A thing has exchange value only in so far as human labour, physical or mental, is embodied in it. And it is not merely labour under any conditions. What determines the value of an article is the socially necessary labour contained in it, that is, the amount of average human labour necessary for its production under the given conditions of society. If anyone uses more or less labour, that does not alter the exchange value of the article which is measured only by the socially necessary labour. Further, if more articles are produced than under the existing social condition can be distributed for use, the exchange value of such articles will fall. If the tools of production are improved, then during the first period of transition, when the old methods are still the generally accepted methods of production, the value of an article is measured according to the human labour socially necessary with the old system of production, whereas when the new system becomes the more prevalent, the value is measured according to this new system.

All this applies to all commodities, including the peculiar commodity, labour power, which, whilst belonging to the individual, and inseparable from him, is in the capitalist mode of production, unlike that in all former modes of production, bought and sold like any other commodity. Like all other commodities when bought by the capitalist, the price paid for the worker's labour-power is in accordance with the necessary social labour contained in its reproduction, that is, he will have to pay the labourer in wages the amount which, under the given conditions of life, the labourer needs for his maintenance and for the propagation of his species. This will, of course, vary with the standard of life, with the supply and demand of labour, with the degree of association of the labourers for their common interests, and so forth. But so long as only one portion of society is engaged in production, whilst the


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 other section lives on the products of that labour, the wages paid for the maintenance of the labourer will be less than the value of the goods he produces. This is the essence of the capitalist system of production. The amount of labour spent by the labourer in producing the value of his wages is "necessary" labour, and the product produced is "necessary" product, and the value of the product "necessary" value, whereas the labour put in above that necessary to reproduce the value of his wages is "surplus" labour, the product so produced "surplus" product, and its value "surplus" value, "necessary" being used herein the sense of necessary to make a living under the given conditions possible.

There are one or two other points to note. By increasing his capital, and by improving his plant and machinery, the capitalist increases his profit (although, be it noted, not his rate of profit, but we cannot go into this subject now). It might thus, at first sight, appear as though the machinery created at any rate some of his surplus value. But a machine, when produced for sale to the capitalist, is as much a commodity as any other article, and the value contained in it is equal to the necessary social labour required for its production. The same is true for the rest of the plant, the raw material, and accessories employed in the production of any particular article, let us say cloth. And spread over a number of years, this value of the raw materials, machinery, etc., finds its way into the finished productcloth. The cotton and accessories in the finished cloth, as cotton, etc., have not changed their value; the machine and other plant, as such, has not changed its value except in so far as it has given up a little of it, which is written off as "wear and tear."

Why, then, if profits are the result of the surplus value produced by surplus labour, do profits increase the more machinery is perfected? Simply because a machine is a time-saving apparatus. It enables the worker to reproduce the value equivalent to his wages in a shorter number of hours every day, thus leaving a longer number of hours to be employed in the production of surplus value. If previously the worker had to work six out of every twelve


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 Had count Solmes, Trim, done the same at the battle of Steenkirk, said Yorick, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run over by a dragoon in the retreat,—he had saved thee;—Saved! cried Trim, interrupting Yorick, and finishing the sentence for him after his own fashion,—he had saved five battalions, an please your reverence, every soul of them:—there was Cutts—continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand,—there was Cutts,—Mackays,—Anguss,—Grahams—and Levens, all cut to pieces;—and so had the English life-guards too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy's fire in their faces, before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket,—they'll go to heaven for it,—added Trim.


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 hours to reproduce his wages, an improved machine enables him to do it in, say, three hours, and to present the capitalist with nine hours unpaid toil. That is why, with every advance in the mode of industry, the rate of exploitation increases and the class antagonism between the workers and capitalists becomes sharper. A similar result, that is, an increase in the rate of exploitation, is obtained by increasing the working day (this being limited however, to the point when it might impair the efficiency of the worker). Being a more open, direct effort at exploitation, it leads to resistance; hence the fights on the working day between the capitalist and working classes.

Again, the same result is achieved by lowering the standard of living of the workers 01 by reducing the cost of living; hence, on the one hand, the employment of women and children whose standard of living is generally lower than that of men (and who, so far, have also been more docile, helpless tools than men), and, on the other hand, the introduction of Free Trade (when England had as yet nothing to fear from the competition of other countries), thus reducing the cost of food to the workers. It is no mere accident that the same industrial capitalists who were so largely instrumental in bringing about Free Trade for the main purpose, as they themselves made clear, of lowering the cost of food, these same philanthropists bitterly opposed every attempt to shorten the working day, or to limit the employment of women and children under even the most inhuman conditions.

And it is from this surplus labour of men, women and children, producing surplus value, and for which the capitalist has paid nothing, that the wealth of the capitalist has been, and is being, built up. At one time, the owner of slaves or serfs simply appropriated the products of his chattels, and saw to their feeding, clothing, etc., as he would to that of his cattle. Now, however, men are outwardly free, and mystery surrounds the wealth of the non-producing class. This mystery is simply the appropriation by the capitalist of the surplus labour or the surplus value produced by the worker. This is the peculiar form of expropriation of one class by the other taken under capitalism, and upon this, the necessary relation between


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 Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, nodding to Yorick,—he's perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse, continued the corporal, where the ground was so strait, and the French had such a nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, and fell'd trees laid this way and that to cover them; (as they always have.)—Count Solmes should have sent us,—we would have fired muzzle to muzzle with them for their lives.—There was nothing to be done for the horse:—he had his foot shot off however for his pains, continued the corporal, the very next campaign at Landen.—Poor Trim got his wound there, quoth my uncle Toby.—'Twas owing, an please your honour, entirely to count Solmes,—had we drub'd them soundly at Steenkirk, they would not have fought us at Landen.—Possibly not,—Trim, said my uncle Toby;—though if they have the advantage of a wood, or you give


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 the capitalist as a class and the worker as a class, which is the very essence of the capitalist form of production, is built the whole superstructure of capitalist jurisprudence, capitalist laws of property, capitalist ethics, in a word, the whole of capitalist ideology. And whatever real reforms may be brought in, the exploitation of the workers will continue, and the morals of capitalists will be the generally accepted morals of society, so long as the capitalist form of production endures. Only with the "expropriation of the expropriators" and the substitution of production for use instead of for profit will the workers, the vast majority of the nation be rescued from exploitation and really become free men in body and in mind.

We cannot go more fully into this subject here, but before leaving Marx's theoretical system we desire to say a few words on the Materialist Conception of History. For of all the theories ever promulgated, this has been the most popularly misunderstood, and it is of the very essence of the Marxian teaching.

Of course it goes without saying that we do not mean by this conception that the individual of any given epoch is actuated by his own material gain to act as he does. On the contrary, the materialist is the first to recognise the enthusiasm, ideals and aspirations of individuals. The philosophic materialists, those who accept Marx's materialist conception of history most completely are the very individuals who are most ready to sacrifice, and have sacrificed, their own material advantages for the sake of their ideals, witness as only one example the numberless Marxian socialists in Russia who have given up and are daily prepared to give up their all, including their life, for the cause dearest to their hearts, the social revolution. What distinguishes the materialist is not that he is a man without ideals, and denies the possession of these to other men, but that he probes deeper into the reality of things and inquires whence come these ideals and enthusiasm—why these particular ideals and morals and thoughts at this particular epoch.


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 them a moment's time to intrench themselves, they are a nation which will pop and pop for ever at you.—There is no way but to march cooly up to them,—receive their fire, and fall in upon them, pell-mell—Ding dong, added Trim.—Horse and foot, said my uncle Toby.—Helter skelter, said Trim.—Right and left, cried my uncle Toby.—Blood an' ounds, shouted the corporal;—the battle raged,—Yorick drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and after a moment's pause, my uncle Toby sinking his voice a note,—resumed the discourse as follows.

William, said my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Yorick, was so terribly provoked at count Solmes for disobeying his orders, that he would not suffer him to come into his presence


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 == THE NORTHWEST COAST, &c.==

CHAPTER I.
Voyage from San Francisco to Shoal-water Bay.—Brig Oriental.—Passengers on board the Brig.—Ship a heavy Sea.—Mouth of the Columbia.—Quantities of Drift-wood.—Cross the Bar at Shoal-water Bay.—Heavy Sea.

the fall of 1852, having received an invitation from my friend, Mr. Charles J. W. Russell, of Shoal-water Bay, to make him a visit, I determined to accept his kind offer, and accordingly secured a passage on board the brig Oriental, Captain Hill, which was bound up the Bay for a cargo of piles and spruce timber. I had always, from my earliest recollections, a strong desire to see the great River Columbia, and to learn something of the habits and customs of the tribes of the Northwest. This desire had been increased by the visit of a chief of the Clalam tribe of Indians from Puget Sound, who arrived at San Francisco, where I was then residing, and who received a great deal of attention from me during his visit of two or three weeks.

This chief, whose name was Chetzamokha, and who is known by the whites as the Duke of York, was very urgent to have me visit his people. Subsequently, on his return home, he sent me a present of a beautiful canoe, and a bag containing a quantity of cornelians, which are found along the shores of the bays and rivers of Washington and Oregon Territories.

I found, on joining the brig, that there were several


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 for many months after.—I fear, answered Yorick, the squire will be as much provoked at the corporal, as the King at the count.—But 'twould be singularly hard in this case, continued he, if corporal Trim, who has behaved so diametrically opposite to count Solmes, should have the fate to be rewarded with the same disgrace;—too oft in this world, do things take that train.—I would spring a mine, cried my uncle Toby, rising up,—and blow up my fortifications, and my house with them, and we would perish under their ruins, ere I would stand by and see it.—Trim directed a slight,—but a grateful bow towards his master,—and so the chapter ends.


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—Then, Yorick, replied my uncle Toby, you and I will lead the way abreast,—and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.—And Susannah, an please your honour, said Trim, shall be put in the rear.—'Twas an excellent disposition,—and in this order, without either drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my uncle Toby's house to Shandy-hall.

—I wish, said Trim, as they entered the door,—instead of the sash-weights, I had cut off the church-spout, as I once thought to have done.—You have cut off spouts enow, replied Yorick.—

many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever in different airs and attitudes,—not one,


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26 26 ANATOMY OF THE RAT

with the occipital condyles of the skull by means of two lateral concave surfaces, the superior articular foveae, one on each side. It bears posteriorly a pair of lateral ovoid surfaces, inferior articular foveae, for articulation with the epistropheus. A third articular surface connects these facets ventrally. In man, and presumably in the rat, the chief movement permitted between the superior articular foveae and the occipital condyles is a "nodding" of the head. In "shaking" the head the atlas revolves around the dens as a pivot. The elongated transverse process of the atlas is flattened dorsoventrally. Its dorsal surface slopes backward to the posterior end of the vertebra, where it joins a vertical plate. Between this plate and the inferior articular fovea is the posterior opening of the foramen transversarium, through which the vertebral artery passes. This foramen extends anterodorsally, and communicates with the dorsal surface of the atlas by an oval opening. The artery then turning medially traverses the atlantal foramen to the inner surface of the atlas.

The centrum of the epistropheus is flattened dorsoventrally and prolonged anteriorly by the dens. The dens articulate with the fovea dentis by the anterior articular facet on its ventral side. The cranial articular facets, one on each side of the epistropheus, impinge upon the inferior articular foveae of the atlas. The postzygapophyses, one toward the upper end of each pedicle, articulate behind with the prezygapophyses of the third cervical vertebrae. The laterally flattened neural spine is considerably higher than that of any other cervical vertebra. It extends forward over the atlas and backward over the third vertebra. The foramen transversarium pierces the base of the short transverse process.

In the fifth cervical vertebra the centrum and vertebral arch form in side view an obtuse angle with each other.


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18 passengers bound to the Bay, and I concluded, as they were all captains of vessels, we should have a very pleasant time. There was Captain Hill, the master, Captain Pratt, the mate, and Captain Baker, Captain Weldon, Captain Swain, Captain Eussell, and myself for passengers. I believe, with the exception of myself and the cook, who was called Doctor, every one on board the brig had held some office. I was the only one addressed as Mister, and, as Captain Baker remarked, it was quite refreshing to have one person on board without a title.

We left the harbor of San Francisco about noon on the 20th of November, and the old brig being very light, we were tumbled about in a lively manner while crossing the bar, where there was a tremendous swell running in from the southwest. However, we suffered no damage, and soon found ourselves on our course with a fair wind. We continued on in this manner for three days, without any thing occurring of interest, and the monotony of the scene only broken by the stories of the company of captains, who, sailor-like, never let slip an opportunity of relating a jest or an anecdote. On the fourth day, being in the latitude of the Columbia River, the wind came out ahead, and blew with violence from the northwest. This soon raised a heavy sea, and the brig could make but little progress. On the evening of the 24th, while standing by the cabin table with the captain, looking over the chart, we shipped a sea which stove in the window of the cabin (which looked out on deck), knocked me clear over the table, drenched the captain, put out the lights, and set the whole cabin afloat.

The other passengers had turned into their berths, where they lay telling stories, and they were most intensely delighted with the adventure. The steward soon came, who lighted the lamp, swabbed up the floor, and set us to rights. The next morning we found ourselves


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27 The centrum is dorsoventrally flattened. The spinous process is a low pointed crest. The prezygapophysis, borne by the pedicle, is ovoid when viewed from above. Its articular surface is directed dorsomediad. The postzygapophysis is directly behind it, is similar in shape, and its articular surface is ventrolaterad. The transverse process, attached at the base of the pedicle, is pierced in the region of attachment by the foramen transversarium. The vertebrarterial canal comprises the transverse formina of the cervical vertebrae. It terminates with the sixth cervical vertebra.

The centrum of the fifth thoracic vertebra is nearly cylindrical. The spinous process is long and tapering; its point is directed caudally. There is a notch on the anterior edge of the laminae. This notch is flanked on each side by the oval prezygapophyses whose articular surfaces face dorsally. The postzygapophyses lie behind the prezygapophyses, but their articular surfaces are directed ventrally. Each pedicle is deeply notched posteriorly, forming an intervertehral foramen, for the passage of a spinal nerve. The transverse process of each side is situated between the anterior and posterior zygapophyses. The articular surface of the transverse process, facing laterally, supports the tubercle of a rib. A depression, the costal demifacet, will be observed at each end of the centrum near its dorsal border. The adjacent demifacets of two successive vertebrae combine to form the articular surface for the head of a rib. The tubercle of this rib articulates with the posterior vertebra of the pair under consideration.

The fourth lumbar vertebra's centrum is cylindrical ventrally, but flattened above. The spinous process is a laterally compressed plate which runs the whole length of the vertebra, is somewhat triangular in shape, and leans


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28 cranially. The articular surface of the prezygapophysis faces mediodorsad. The facet of the prominent postzygapophysis faces laterally. The transverse process projects cranioventrally from the base of the pedicle.

The sacrum consists of four vertebrae more or less completely fused together. The transverse processes project horizontally from the centra. They are fused at their distal ends. The transverse processes of the first two sacral vertebrae are considerably thicker than the others. They are expanded laterally, forming the auricular surface, which articulates with the pelvic girdle. Since this girdle is attached to the hind legs, the weight of the posterior part of the body falls on these two sacral vertebrae — hence their stout construction. The intervertebral formina are located, as usual, between the vertebrae. The prezygapophyses of the first sacral vertebra are well developed, for they are part of a movable joint. The remaining functionless zygapophyses of the sacrum are rudimentary. They lie close to the bases of the high spinous processes.

The caudal, or tail, vertebrae show gradual and progressive stages of simplification from the sacrum to the posterior end of the tail. The neural canal is small in the anterior part of the tail, and soon completely disappears. The anterior caudal vertebrae have ventral pairs of spines between which run the caudal blood vessels. There is a chevron bone in some of the vertebrae which partly incloses these vessels on the under side.

Exercise V. Make a labeled sketch of each vertebra which has been described.

The sternum, or breastbone, comprises seven bony segments (sternebrae) united end to end. The first, or manubrium, is keeled ventrally, and has a broad anterior region, concave above. The first rib is attached to it. The suc-


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 or all of them, can ever help the reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak, or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.—There was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, by which handle he would take a thing,—it baffled, Sir, all calculations.—The truth was, his road lay so very far on one side, from that wherein most men travelled,—that every object before him presented a face and section of itself to his eye, altogether different from the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest of mankind.—In other words, 'twas a different object,—and in course was differently considered:

This is the true reason, that my dear Jenny and I, as well as all the world besides us, have such eternal squabbles about nothing.—She looks at her outside,—I, at her in—. How is it possible we should agree about her value?


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Rh ceeding six pairs of ribs are attached between the segments. The seventh segment (xiphoid process) is not associated with a pair of ribs. It terminates in a round plate of cartilage.

''Exercise VI. Draw and label the sternum.''

There are thirteen pairs of ribs. A rib contains a dorsal and a ventral segment. The anterior seven pairs are the true ribs, for they are attached to the sternum. The six posterior pairs are the false ribs. The eighth, ninth, and tenth pairs attach to the posterior border of the seventh, and by cartilage to the fifth sternebra. The three posterior ribs are floating ribs, lacking ventral segments. The ribs are bow-shaped in general, the angle, or region of greatest convexity, being dorsal. Most of the ribs are distinctly flattened anteroposteriorly. From the fifth to the tenth pairs, inclusive, the distal end of the rib is twisted, so that the broad surface is posterolaterad. Compare the shapes of the different ribs.

The fifth rib may be used to illustrate the articular surfaces. The capitulum costae (head) is a slight swelling at the proximal end. Its circular medial surface articulates with the demifacets of two adjacent vertebrae, as previously described. The tuberculum costae (tubercle) is a dorsal enlargement two or three millimeters lateral to the head. It articulates with the transverse process of the vertebra, and is separated from the head by the collum costae (neck) of the rib.

The thoracic cavity, surrounded on the sides by the ribs, dorsally and ventrally by the backbone and sternum respectively, resembles an ice cream cone with the apex cut off. The cranial thoracic aperture is in front, the larger caudal thoracic aperture behind. Both are circumscribed by ribs, sternum, and backbone. The thoracic cavity in-


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30 creases in size, and air enters the lungs, when the ribs are pulled anteriorly in breathing.

Exercise VII. Sketch one of the longer ribs.

The pectoral girdle includes the scapula (shoulder blade), and the clavicle (collar bone). The former is a flattened triangular bone with its apex pointing cranioventrad and its broad inner surface facing the vertebral column. A cartilaginous disc connects one end of the clavicle with the acromion process of the scapula. A similar disc unites the other end with the anterior end of the sternum. The clavicle is the only bony connection between the scapula and axial skeleton.

The concave thickened superior margin of the scapula is directed cephalad. The convex vertebral margin is dorsal. The third margin, the axillary faces ventrocaudally, and is nearly straight. The anterior, posterior, and ventral corners of the bone are designated the medial, inferior, and lateral angles respectively. At the lateral angle is the pear-shaped glenoid cavity for articulation with the humerus bone of the upper arm. The short coracoid process (homologous to the bone of the same name in the lower animals) projects medially from the cranial end of the glenoid cavity. The scapular spine is a thin, prominent plate (forming nearly a right angle with the scapula) which divides the lateral surface of the scapula into the supraspinous fossa (anterior) and the concave infraspinous fossa (posterior). The spine tapers dorsally to a point at the vertebral border; it ends ventrally in a free projection, the acromion process or acromion. The inconspicuous projection on the caudal surface of the latter is probably the metacromion process. There are two longitudinal ridges on the inner surface of the scapula.


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 Rh about thirty miles to the westward of the Columbia River, from which a huge volume of water was running, carrying in its course great quantities of drift-logs, boards, chips, and saw-dust, with which the whole water around us was covered. During the freshets in this river, the force of the current of fresh water discharged from it is sufficient to discolor the ocean for sixty miles from the coast.

The wind continuing to blow from the northwest, we beat about till the 28th, when, running in-shore, we made Cape Shoal-water, the northern point at the entrance to Shoal-water Bay. A heavy sea was breaking on the bar, and no opening presented itself to us. Russell, who was acting pilot, felt afraid to venture, and wished to stand off; but, by the time he had made up his mind, we had neared the entrance, so that it was impossible for us to turn to windward, and the only alternative was to go ashore or go into the harbor.

Every man was stationed at his post — Captain Hill and one man at the wheel. Captains Swain and Russell on the fore-yard, looking out. Captain Weldon heaving the lead, the sailors at the braces, and Captain Baker and myself watching to see the fun. The breakers were very high, and foamed, and roared, and dashed around us in the most terrific manner ; but the old brig was as light on them as a gull, and, without shipping a drop of water, passed over and through them all ; and after running up the channel about two miles, we came to anchor in smooth water, and found ourselves safe and sound in Shoal-water Bay.


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Rh The humerus is the bony constituent of the upper arm. Its proximal end articulates with the scapula; it articulates distally with the radius and ulna of the fore arm. Between these two extremities is the shaft, or body, of the bone. The head is a prominent oval enlargement at the proximal end, which fits into the glenoid cavity, furnishing the articulation with the scapula. The lesser tuberosity is a low knob located immediately in front of the head on the medial surface of the bone. The greater tuberosity is a dorsoventrally elongated projection on the cranial surface of the humerus, immediately in front of the head, extending also on to the lateral surface of the bone. The intertubercular groove separates the two tuberosities. The deltoid tuberosity is a very prominent rough-edged ridge running, on the ventral surface, from the greater tuberosity about half way to the distal end of the humerus.

The articular surface at the distal end of the bone is saddle-shaped to receive the corresponding surfaces of the radius and ulna. This end of the bone is flattened. It bears two depressions immediately above the articular surface — the radial fossa on the ventral side to receive the radius during flexion of the arm, and the olecranon fossa on the dorsal side to accomodate the olecranon process during extension. The medial epicondyle is a prominent cylindroid process medial to the saddle-shaped articular surface. The lateral epicondyle is a broad process located laterally near the distal end of the bone.

The radius and ulna support the fore arm, the former lying anterior to the latter. The two are firmly bound together by the interosseus ligament. The body of the radius bows forward and outward. Dorsally it expands abruptly, forming the head, which bears an oval surface for articulation with the humerus. The posterior side of the head is flattened, and rests against a similar surface