"I thanked him, and regained my cab with my head whirling. What, after all, if the countess should have deceived me? My blood chilled as I remembered her words of the day before: recalled by the government she hated, her two brothers forced into the army, the cruelties and indignities Russia had heaped upon her family, and this last peremptory order to return. Had my sympathetic nature and inexperience gotten me into trouble? Then that Madonna-like head with angelic face, the lips moving in prayer, rose before me. No, no; not she. I would stake my life.

"'Yes; that is the man.'

"The Austrian looked at me searchingly, and, wheeling around sharply, said:—

"'Monsieur, can I see you alone? I have something of importance to communicate.'

"The remark and his abrupt manner indicated so plainly an arrest, that for the moment I hesitated, running over in my mind what might be my wisest course to pursue. Then, thinking I could best explain my business in Vienna in the privacy of my room, I said stiffly:—

"'Yes; I am now on my way to my apartment. I will see you there.'

"He entered first, shut the door behind him, crossed the room; passed his hand behind the curtains, opened the closet, shut it, and said:—

"'We are alone?'

"'Quite.'

"Then, confronting me, 'You are an American?'

"'You are right.'

"'And have your passport with you?'

"I drew it from my pocket, and handed it to him. He glanced at the signature, refolded it, and said:—

"'On the train yesterday leaving Venice.'

"'Never before?'

"'Never.'

"'Why did she not leave Venice earlier?'

"'The count was dying, and could not be moved. He was buried two days ago.'

"A shade passed over his face, 'Poor De Rescka! I suspected as much.'

"Then facing me again, his face losing its suspicious expression:—

"'Monsieur, I am the brother of the countess,—Colonel Boski of the army. A week ago my letters were intercepted, and I left Cracow in the night. Since then I have been hunted like an animal. This uniform is my third disguise. As soon as my connection with the plot was discovered, my sister was ordered home. The death of the count explains her delay, and prevented my seeing her at the station. I had selected the first station out of Vienna. I tried for an opportunity this morning at the depot, but dared not. I saw you, and learned from the cabman your hotel.'

"His color flushed, and his hand instinctively felt for his sword; then, relaxing, he said:—

"'You are right. The times are troublous. Every other man is a spy. I do not blame you for suspecting me. I have nothing but my word. If you do not believe it, I cannot help it. I will go. You will at least permit me to thank you for your kindness to my sister,' drawing off his glove and holding out his hand.

"'The hand of a soldier is never refused the world over,' and I shook it warmly. As it dropped to his side I caught sight of his seal-ring.

"'It is enough, colonel. Your sister showed me her own on the train. Pardon my suspicions. What can I do for you?' He looked puzzled, hardly grasping my meaning.

"'Nothing. You have told me all I wanted to know.'

"'But you will breakfast with me before I take the train?' I said.

"'No; that might get you into trouble—serious trouble, if I should be arrested. On the contrary, I must insist that you remain in this room until I leave the building.'

"'But you perhaps need money; these disguises are expensive,' glancing at his perfect appointment.

"'You are right. Perhaps twenty rubles—it will be enough. Give me your address in Berlin. If I am taken, you will lose your money. If I escape, it will be returned.'

"I shook his hand, and the door closed. A week later a man wrapped in a cloak called at my lodgings and handed me an envelope. There was no address and no message, only twenty rubles."

"Pardon me, have you ever seen or heard of the countess since?"

"Never."

"Nor her brother?"

"Nor her brother."

"And the locket?"

"It is here where she placed it."

At this instant the moon rolled out from behind a cloud, and shone full on his face. He drew out his watch-chain, touched it with his thumb-nail, and placed the trinket in my hand. It was such as a child might wear, an enameled thread encircling it. Through the glass I could see the tiny nest of jet-black hair.

For some moments neither of us spoke. At last, with my heart aglow, my whole nature profoundly stirred by the unconscious nobility of the man, I said:—

"My friend, do you know why she bound the bracelet to your wrist?"

"No; that always puzzled me. I have often wondered."

[The outlines of this story were given me by my friend Augustus Thomas, whose plays are but an index to the tenderness of his own nature.]

He came from up the railroad near the State line. Sanders was the name on the pay-roll,—John Sanders, laborer. There was nothing remarkable about him. He was like a hundred others up and down the track. If you paid him off on Saturday night you would have forgotten him the next week, unless, perhaps, he had spoken to you. He looked fifty years of age, and yet he might have been but thirty. He was stout and strong, his hair and beard cropped short. He wore a rough blue jumper, corduroy trousers, and a red flannel shirt, which showed at his throat and wrists. He wore, too, a leather strap buckled about his waist.

The first week he shoveled coal on a siding, loading the yard engines. Then Burchard, the station-master, sent him down to the street crossing to flag the trains for the dump carts filling the scows at the long dock.

This crossing right-angled a deep railroad cut half a mile long. On the level above, looking down upon its sloping sides, staggered a row of half-drunken shanties with blear-eyed windows, and ragged roofs patched and broken; some hung over on crutches caught under their floor timbers. Sanders lived in one of these cabins,—the one nearest the edge of the granite retaining-wall flanking the street crossing.

There were only two in Sanders's shanty,—Sanders and his crippled daughter, a girl of twelve, with a broken back. She barely reached the sill when she stood at the low window to watch her father waving his flag. Bent, hollow-eyed, shrunken; her red hair cropped short in her neck; her poor little white fingers clutching the window-frame. "The express is late this morning," or "No. 14 is on time," she would say, her restless, eager blue eyes glancing at the clock, or "What a lot of ashes they do be haulin' to-day!" Nothing else was to be seen from her window.

When the night came he would light the kerosene lamp in their one room and read aloud the stories from the Sunday papers, she listening eagerly and asking him questions he could not answer, her eyes filling with tears or her face breaking into smiles. This summed up her life.

Not much in the world, all this, for Sanders!—not much of rest, or comfort, or happy sunshine,—not much of song or laughter, the pipe of birds or smell of sweet blossoms,—not much room for gratitude or courage or human kindness or charity. Only the ceaseless engine-bell, the grime, the sulphurous hellish smoke, the driving rain, the ice and dust,—only the endless monotony of ill-smelling, steaming carts, the smoke-stained signal-flag and greasy lantern,—only the tottering shanty with the two beds, the stove, and the few chairs and table,—only the blue-eyed crippled girl who wound her thin arms about his neck.

On these days Sanders would lie on his back and watch the treetops swaying in the sunlight against the sky, and the girl would sit by him and make mounds of fresh mosses and pebbles, and tie the wild flowers into bunches. Sometimes he would pretend that there were fish in the pond, and would cut a pole and bend a pin, tie on a bit of string, and sit for hours watching the cork, she laughing beside him in expectation. Sometimes they would both go to sleep, his arm across her. And so the summer passed.

"I seen him a-comin'," he said; "them rats from the bolt-factory was a-humpin' him, too! Guess if the freight hadn't a-come along they'd a-ketched him."

All but his eyes! These were brown as agates, and as deep and clear. Kindly eyes that looked and thought and trusted. It was these eyes that first made the girl love him; they reminded her, strange to say, of her father's. She saw, too, perhaps unconsciously to herself, down in their depths, something of the same hunger for sympathy that stirred her own heart—the longing for companionship. She wanted something nearer her own age to love, though she never told her father. This was a heartache she kept to herself, perhaps because she hardly understood it.

She taught him all manner of tricks. How to walk on his hind feet with a paper cap on his head, a plate in his mouth, begging. How to make believe he was dead, lying still a minute at a time, his odd ear furling nervously and his eyes snapping fun; how to carry a basket to the grocery on the corner, when she would limp out in the morning for a penny's worth of milk or a loaf of bread, he waiting until she crossed the street, and then marching on proudly before her.

After a while Sanders coaxed him down to the track, teaching him to bring back his empty dinner-pail, the dog spending the hour with him, sitting by his side demurely, or asleep in the sentry-box.

One morning the dog came limping up the cut with a broken leg. Some said a horse had kicked him; some that the factory boys had thrown stones at him. He made no outcry, only came sorrowfully in, his mouth dry and dust-covered, dragging his hind leg, that hung loose like a flail; then he laid his head in the girl's lap. She crooned and cried over him all day, binding up the bruised limb, washing his eyes and mouth, putting him in her own bed. There was no one to go for her father, and if there were, he could not leave the crossing. When Sanders came home he felt the leg over carefully, the girl watching eagerly. "No, Kate, child, yees can't do nothin'; it's broke at the jint. Don't cry, young one."

That night, when the girl was asleep, he took the dog up in his arms, and wrapping his coat around him so the corner loafers could not see, rang the bell of the dispensary. The doctor was out, but a nurse looked at the wound. "No, there was nothing to be done; the socket had been crushed. Keep it bandaged, that was all." Then he brought him home and put him under the bed.

In three or four weeks he was about again, dragging the leg when he walked. He could still get around the shanty and over to the grocer's, but he could not climb the hill, even with the pail empty. He tried one day, but he only climbed half way. Sanders found him in the path when he went home, lying down by the pail.

As for the girl—there was now a double bond between her and the dog. He was not only poor and an outcast, but a cripple like herself. Before, she was his friend, now, she was his mother, whispering to him, her cheek to his; holding him up to the window to see the trains rush by, his nose touching the glass, his poor leg dangling.

The train hands missed him too, vowing vengeance, and the fireman of No. 6, Joe Connors, spent half a Sunday trying to find the boy that threw the stone. Bill Adams, who ran the yard engine, went all the way home the next day after the accident for a bottle of horse liniment, and left it at the shanty, and said he'd get the doctor at the next station if Sanders wanted.

When the conductor and passengers of the express walked back, Bill Adams was bending over a man in a blue jumper laid flat on the cinders. He was bleeding from a wound in his head. Lying beside him was a yellow dog licking his stiffened hand. A doctor among the passengers opened his red shirt and pressed his hand on the heart. He said he was breathing, and might live. Then they brought a stretcher from the office, and Connors and Bill Adams carried him up the hill, the dog following, limping.

Here they laid him on a bed beside a sobbing, frightened girl; the dog at her feet.

Adams bent over him, washing his head with a wad of cotton waste.

Just before he died he opened his eyes, rested them on his daughter, half raised his head as if in search of the dog, and then fell back on his bed, that same sweet, clear smile about his mouth.

"Don't, Billy," he said. "I couldn't help it. He was a cripple."

I was sitting in the shadow of Mme. Poulard's delightful inn at St. Michel when I first saw Bäader. Dinner had been served, and I had helped to pay for my portion by tacking a sketch on the wall behind the chair of the hostess. This high valuation was not intended as a special compliment to me, the wall being already covered with similar souvenirs from the sketch-books of half the painters in Europe.

He wore a pair of new green kid gloves, was dressed in a brown cloth coat bound with a braid of several different shades, showing different dates of repair, and surmounted by a velvet collar of the same date as the coat. His trousers were of a nondescript gray, and flapped about a pair of brand-new gaiters, evidently purchased for the occasion, and, from the numerous positions assumed while he talked, evidently one size too small.

It was easy to see that the person before me had spared neither skill, time, nor expense to make as favorable an impression on his possible employers as lay in his power.

The governor had never heard Dieppe called "petite" nor Cancale "spéciale," and said so, lifting his eyebrows inquiringly. Bäader did not waver. "But if messieurs pretend a much smaller route and of few days, say to St. Michel, Paramé, and Cancale,"—here the governor's brow relaxed again,—"then it was imposseeble,—if messieurs will pardon,—quite imposseeble for less zan ten francs."

So the price was agreed upon, and the hat, now with a decided metallic sheen, once more swept the cobblestones of the courtyard. The ceremony being over, its owner then drew off the green kid gloves, folded them flat on his knee, guided them into the inside pocket of the brown coat with the assorted bindings as carefully as if they had been his letter of credit, and declared himself at our service.

The governor, however, was obdurate. He had a way of being obdurate when anything irritated him, and Bäader began to be one of these things. Cancale might be all very well for me, but how about the hotel for him, who had nothing to do, no pictures to paint? He had passed that time in his life when he could sleep under a boat with water pouring down the back of his neck through a tarpaulin full of holes.

"The hotel, messieurs! Imagine! Is it posseeble that monsieur imagine for one moment that Bäader would arrange such annoyances? I remember ze hotel quite easily. It is not like, of course, ze Grand Hôtel of Paris, but it is simple, clean, ze cuisine superb, and ze apartment fine and hospitable. Remembare it is Bäader."

Bäader's face was a study; a pained, deprecating expression passed over it as he uncovered his head, his glazed headpiece glistening in the sun.

"Baths, monsieur—and ze water of ze sea everywhere?"

These assurances of future comfort were not overburdened with details, but they served to satisfy and calm the governor, I pleading, meanwhile, that Bäader had always proved himself a man of resource, quite ready when required with either a meal or an answer.

So we started for Cancale.

"But it is only Paramé, monsieur," with an accent on the "only" and a lifting of the hands. "Cancale spéciale will charm you; ze coast it is so immediately flat, and ze life of ze sea charmante. Nevare at Paramé, always at Cancale." So we drove on. The governor pacified but anxious—only succumbing at my argument that Bäader knew all Normandy thoroughly, and that an old courier like him certainly could be trusted to select a hotel.

One glimpse of this sea-burst tumbled me out of the carriage, sketch-trap in hand. Bäader and the governor kept on. If the latter noticed the discrepancy between Bäader's description of the country and the actual topography, no word fell from him at the moment of departure.

"What was the matter with the governor, Bäader? No hotel after all?"

"On the contraire, pardonnez-moi, monsieur, a most excellent hotel, simple and quite of ze people, and with many patrons. Even at ze moment of arrival a most distinguished artist, a painter of ze Salon, was with his cognac upon a table at ze entrance."

"No bath, perhaps," I remarked casually, still absorbed in my work, and with my mind at rest, now that Bäader remained with me.

"On the contraire, monsieur, les bains are most excellent—primitive, of course, simple, and quite of ze people. But, monsieur le gouverneur is no more young. When one is no more young,"—with a deprecating shrug,—"parbleu, it is imposseeble to enjoy everything. Monsieur le gouverneur, I do assure you, make ze conclusion most regretfully to return to Paramé."

"Moreover, it is ze grande fête to-night—ze fête of ze République. Zare are fireworks and illumination and music by ze municipality. It is simple, but quite of ze people. It is for zis reason that I made ze effort special with monsieur le gouverneur to remain with you. Ah! it is you, monsieur, who are so robust, so enthusiastic, so appreciative."

Here Bäader put on his hat, and I closed my sketch-trap.

"But monsieur has not yet dined," he said as we walked, "nor even at his hotel arrived. Ze inn of Mme. Flamand is so very far away, and ze ascent up ze cliffs difficile. If monsieur will be so good, zare is a café near by where it is quite posseeble to dine."

"What's this for, Bäader? Have you not had enough to eat?"

Bäader's face wore its blandest smile. "On ze contraire, I have made for myself a most excellent repast; but if monsieur will consider—ze dinner is a prix fixe, and monsieur can eat it all, or it shall remain for ze propriétaire. Zis, if monsieur will for one moment attend, will be stupid extraordinaire. I have made ze investigation, and discover zat ze post départ from Cancale in one hour. How simple zen to affeex ze stamps,—only five sous,—and in ze morning, even before Mme. Bäader is out of ze bed, it is in Paris—a souvenir from Cancale. How charmante ze surprise!"

I discovered afterward that since he had joined us Bäader's own domestic larder had been almost daily enriched with crumbs like these from Dives's table.

But Bäader, not to be outdone by any contretemps, started off to find an old blind fellow who played an accordeon, collecting five francs of me in advance for his pay, under the plea that it was quite horrible that the young people could not dance. "While one is young, monsieur, music is ze life of ze heart."

He brought the old man back, and with a certain care and tenderness set him down on a stone bench, the sightless eyes of the poor peasant turning up to the stars as he swayed the primitive instrument back and forth. The young girls clung to Bäader's arm, and blessed him for his goodness. I forgave him his duplicity, his delight in their happiness was so genuine. Perhaps it was even better than a fête.

After it was all over and "Moritz Bäader Courrier et Interprète" was duly inscribed,—and in justice it must be confessed it was always clearly written with a flourish at the end that lent it additional dignity,—Bäader would pause for a moment, carefully balance the pen, trying it first on his thumb-nail, and then place two little dots of ink over the first a, saying, with a certain wave of his hand, as he did so, "For ze honor of my families, monsieur." This peculiarity gained for him from the governor the sobriquet of "old fly-specks."

The inn of Mme. Flamand, although less pretentious than many others that had sheltered us, was clean and comfortable, the lower deck and companionway were freshly sanded,—the whole house had a decidedly nautical air about it,—and the captain's state-room on the upper deck, a second-floor room, was large and well-lighted, although the ceiling might have been a trifle too low for the governor, and the bed a few inches too short.

I opened the door of the locker, looked behind a sea-chest, then out of one window, expecting to see the green-painted luxury hanging by a hook or drying on a convenient roof. In some surprise I said:—

"And the bath, Bäader?"

"Does monsieur expect to bathe at ze night?" inquired Bäader with a lifting of his eyebrows, his face expressing a certain alarm for my safety.

"No, certainly not; but to-morrow, when I get up."

And so, with a cheery "Bon soir" from madame, and a profound bow from Bäader, I fell asleep.

The next morning I was awakened by a rumbling in the lower hold, as if the cargo was being shifted. Then came a noise like the moving of heavy barrels on the upper deck forward of the companionway. The next instant my door was burst open, and in stalked two brawny, big-armed fish-girls, yarn-stockinged to their knees, and with white sabots and caps. They were trundling the lower half of a huge hogshead.

"Pour le bain, monsieur," they both called out, bursting into laughter, as they rolled the mammoth tub behind my bed, grounded it with a revolving whirl, as a juggler would spin a plate, and disappeared, slamming the door behind them, their merriment growing fainter as they dropped down the companionway.

I peered over the head-board, and discovered the larger half of an enormous storage-barrel used for packing fish, with fresh saw-marks indenting its upper rim. Then I shouted for Bäader.

There was no mistaking the indications; Bäader's bath had arrived.

I climbed up, and, dropping in with both feet, avoiding the splinters and the nails, sat on the sawed edge, ready for total immersion. Before I could adjust myself to its conditions there came another rush along the companionway, accompanied by the same clatter of sabots and splashing of water. There was no time to reach the bed, and it was equally evident that I could not vault out and throw myself against the door. So I simply ducked down, held on, and shouted, in French, Normandy patois, English:—

"Don't come in! Don't open the door! Leave the water outside!" and the like. I might as well have ruined my throat on a Cancale lugger driving before a gale. In burst the door, and in swept the Amazons, letting go another kettleful, this time over my upper half, my lower half being squeezed down into the tub.

"Bäader, where in thunder have you been? Drag that chest against that door quick, and come in. Is this what you call a bath?"

Some two months later, the governor and I happened to be strolling through the flower-market of the Madeleine. He had been selecting plants for the windows of his apartment, and needed a reliable man to arrange them in suitable boxes.

"That fellow Bäader lives down here somewhere; perhaps he might know of some one," he said, consulting his notebook. "Yes; No. 21 Rue Chambord. Let us look him up."

The governor is a great lover of oysters, especially his own Chesapeakes, and his eye ran rapidly over the tempting exhibit as he read aloud, perhaps, unconsciously, to himself, the several labels: "Dinard, Paramé, Dieppe petite, Cancale spéciale." Then a new light seemed to break in upon him.

"Dieppe petite, Cancale spéciale,"—here his face was a study,—"why, that's what Bäader always called Cancale. By thunder! I believe that's where that fellow got his names. I don't believe the rascal was ever in Normandy in his life until I took him. Here, landlord!" A small shop-keeper, wearing an apron, ran out smiling, uncovering the baskets as he approached. "Do you happen to know a courier by the name of Bäader?"

"Where does he live?"

"Upstairs."

I

Above the Schweizerhof Hotel, and at the end of the long walk fronting the lake at Lucerne,—the walk studded with the round, dumpy, Noah's-ark trees,—stands a great building surrounded by flowers and palms, and at night ablaze with hundreds of lamps hung in festoons of blue, yellow, and red. This is the Casino. On each side of the wide entrance is a bill-board, announcing that some world-renowned Tyrolean warbler, famous acrobat, or marvelous juggler will sing or tumble or bewilder, the price of admission remaining the same, despite the enormous sum paid for the appearance of the performer.

During the performance the audience smoke and sip. Between the acts most of them swarm out into the adjacent corridors leading to the gaming-rooms,—licensed rooms these, with toy-horses ridden by tin jockeys, and another equally delusive and tempting device of the devil—a game of tipsy marbles, rolling about in search of sunken saucers emblazoned with the arms of the nations of the earth. These whirligigs of amateur crime are constantly surrounded by eager-eyed men and women, who try their luck for the amusement of the moment, or by broken-down, seedy gamblers, hazarding their last coin for a turn of fortune. Now and then, too, some sweet-faced girl, her arm in her father's, wins a louis with a franc, her childish laughter ringing out in the stifling atmosphere.

"Pardon, monsieur. May I speak to you a moment?"

He was a short, thick-set, smooth-shaven, greasy man, dressed plainly in black, with a huge emerald pin in his shirt front. I have never had any particular use for a man with an emerald pin in his shirt front.

"There will be a game of baccarat," he continued in a low voice, his eyes glancing about furtively, "at eleven o'clock precisely. Knock twice at this door."

Old habitués of Lucerne—habitués of years, men who never cross the Alps without at least a day's stroll under the Noah's-ark trees,—will tell you over their coffee that since the opening of the St. Gotthard Tunnel this half-way house of Lucerne—this oasis between Paris and Rome—has sheltered most of the adventurers of Europe; that under these same trees, and on these very benches, nihilists have sat and plotted, refugees and outlaws have talked in whispers, and adventuresses, with jeweled stilettos tucked in their bosoms, have lain in wait for fresher victims.

When the moment arrived I knocked at the door.

It was opened, not by the greasy Jack-in-the-box with the emerald pin, but by a deferential old man, who looked at me for a moment, holding the door with his foot. Then gently closing it, he preceded me across a hall and up a long staircase. At the top was a passageway and another door, and behind this a large room paneled in dark wood. On one side of this apartment was a high desk. Here sat the cashier counting money, and arranging little piles of chips of various colors. In the centre stood a table covered with black cloth: I had always supposed such tables to be green. About it were seated ten people, the croupier in the middle. The game had already begun. I moved up a chair, saying that I would look on, but not play.

"Faites vos jeux. Le jeu est fait; rien ne va plus."

I began to study the personnel of this clinic of chance.

No one spoke, no one laughed.

Two of the group interested me at once,—the croupier and a woman who sat within three feet of me.

The croupier, who was in evening dress, might have been of any age from thirty to fifty. His eyes were deep-set and glassy, like those of a consumptive. His hair was jet-black, his face clean-shaven; the skin, not ivory, but a dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin and bloodless lips were flattened over a row of pure white teeth with glistening specks of gold that opened when he smiled; closing again slowly like an automaton's. His shrunken, colorless hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. Sometimes, too, in their nervous workings, they drooped together like a bunch of skeleton keys. On one of these lock picks he wore a ring studded alternately with diamonds and rubies.

When the bank won, the croupier permitted a slight shade of disappointment to flash over his face, fading into an expression of apology for taking the stakes. When the bank lost, the lips parted slowly, showing the teeth, in a half smile. Such delicate outward consideration for the feelings of his victims seemed a part of his education, an index to his natural refinement.

The woman was of another type. Although she sat with her back to me, I could catch her profile when she pushed her long veil from her face. She was dressed entirely in black. She had been, and was still, a woman of marked beauty, with an air of high breeding which was unmistakable. Her features were clean-cut and refined, her mouth and nose delicately shaped. Her forehead was shaded by waves of brown hair which half covered her ears. The eyes were large and softened by long lashes, the lids red as if with recent weeping. Her only ornament was a plain gold ring, worn on her left hand. Outwardly, she was the only person in the room who betrayed by her manner any vital interest in the game.

Once when she lost she bit her lips so deeply that a speck of blood tinged her handkerchief. The next instant she was clutching her winnings with almost the ferocity of a hungry animal. Then she leaned back a moment later exhausted in her chair, her face thrown up, her eyes closing wearily.

In her hand she held a small chamois bag filled with gold; when her chips were exhausted she would rise silently, float like a shadow to the desk, lay a handful of gold from the bag upon the counter, sweep the ivories into her hand, and noiselessly regain her seat. She seemed to know no one, and no one to know her, unless it might have been the croupier, who, I thought, watched her closely when he pushed over her winnings, parting his lips a little wider, his smile a trifle more cringing and devilish.

The game went on.

When the clock reached the half-hour the man in gray pushed back his chair, gathered up his winnings, and moved to the door, an attendant handing him his hat. With the exception of the Parisienne, who had gone some time before, taking her companion with her, the devotees were the same,—the two Englishmen still exchanging clean, white Bank of England notes, the German and Haytian losing, but calm as mummies, the fat, oily woman, melting like a red candle, the perspiration streaming down her face.

Suddenly I heard a convulsive gasp. The woman in black was on her feet leaning over the table. Her eyes blazed in a frenzy of delight. She was sweeping into her open hands the piles of gold before her. By some marvelous stroke of luck, and with almost her last louis, she had won every franc on the cloth!

II

So deep an impression had the gambling scene of the night before made upon me that the next morning I loitered under the Noah's-ark trees, hoping I might identify the woman, and in some impossible, improbable way know more of her history. I even lounged into the Casino, tried the door at which I had knocked the night before, and, finding it locked and the scrubwoman suspicious, strolled out carelessly into the garden, and, sitting down under the palms, tried to pick out the windows that opened into the gaming-room. But they were all alike, with pots of flowers blooming in each.

The audience was already seated. It was at the moment of that profound hush which precedes the recital. Even my footfall, light as it was, reëchoed to the groined arches. The church was ghostly dark,—so dark that the hundreds of heads melted into the mass of pews, and they into the gloom of column and wall. The only distinguishable gleam was the soft glow of the dying day struggling through the lower panes of the dust-begrimed windows. Against these hung long chains holding unlighted lamps.

I felt my way to an empty pew on a side aisle, and sat down. The silence continued. Now and again there was a slight cough, instantly checked. Once a child dropped a book, the echoes lasting apparently for minutes. The darkness became almost black night. Only the clean, new panes of glass used in repairing some break in the begrimed windows showed clear. These seemed to hang out like small square lanterns.

The vox humana stopped, not gradually, but abruptly, as if the heart had broken and its life had gone out in the one supreme effort. Then silence,—a silence so profound that a low sob from the pew across the aisle startled me. I strained my eyes, and caught the outlines of a woman heavily veiled. I could see, too, a child beside her, his head on her shoulder. The boy was bare-headed, his curls splashed over her black dress. Then another sob, half smothered, as if the woman were strangling.

No other sound broke the stillness; only the feeling everywhere of pent-up, smothered sighs.

He stopped half way down the middle aisle, opposite a pew, the faint flush of his lantern falling on the nearest upturned face. A long thin candle was fastened to this pew. The firefly of a taper, held aloft in his trembling hand, flickered uncertainly like a moth, and rested on the top of this candle. Then the wick kindled and burned. As its rays felt their way over the vast interior, struggling up into the dark roof, reaching the gilded ornaments on the side altar enshrouded in gloom, glinting on the silver of the hanging lamps, a plaintive note fluttered softly, swelled into an ecstasy of sound, and was lost in a chorus of angel voices.

The woman in the pew across the aisle bent forward, resting her head on the back of the seat in front, drawing the child to her. The boy cuddled closer. As she turned, a spark of light trickled down her cheek. I caught sight of the falling tear, but could not see the face.

The music ceased; the last anthem had been played; a gas-jet flared in the organ-loft; the people began to rise from their seats. The sacristan appeared again from behind the altar, and walked slowly down the side aisle, carrying only his lantern. As he neared my seat the woman stood erect, and passed out of the pew, her hand caressing the child. Surely I could not be mistaken about that movement, the slow, undulating, rhythmic walk, the floating shadow of the night before. Certainly not with the light of the sacristan's lantern now full on her face. Yes: the same finely chiseled features, the same waves of brown hair, the same eyes, the same drooping eyelids, like blossoms wet with dew! At last I had found her.

As he stood still, the woman drew suddenly back as if stunned by a blow, clutched the boy to her side, and fixed her eyes on the lantern's ghostly shadows. I leaned over quickly. The glow of the rude lamp, with its squares of waving light flecking the stone flagging, traced in unmistakable outlines the form of a cross!

For some minutes she stood as if in a trance, her eyes fastened upon the floating shadow, her whole form trembling, bent, her body swaying. Only when the sacristan moved a few paces ahead to hold open the swinging door, and the shadow of the cross faded, did she awake from the spell.