Evening Star Newspaper, June 8, 1924, Page 74

Tl’le Honorable BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER Justice in a Far-Off Land and Its Effect on an Official’s Home. ROM the foot of her table in the shabby, grandiose dining room of the Raffleton residency, the Honorable Sylvia could see, over her husband' shoulder and through the open window, a patch of brilliantly moonlighted lawn which had a gray stone in the middle of it. She didn’t mind the look of it so much in the daytime. It was at night, under the moon, that it had the power, sometimes, to fascinate her, to hold her eyes and not let them zet away. Carew himself just an ordi- nery young Englishman with a genjus for governink savage Deoples that had taken him out of the ordered life of the Indian civil service and caused him to be lofined here and there as the services of some such talent hap- pened to be required. Certainly Carew was no sort of match for an earl's daughter. and that is what Sylvia was. Nevertheless Sylvia had not at all got over being wildly in love with him. Carew had was ome back only the day before from a two wecks' excursion into the jungle upon an errand of culiar danger and difficulty. He had ome back to find the South Asiatic squadron of the British fleet at an- chor jn the Rafficton Harbor and the admiral and his staff being officially antertained at the residency by his wife. He had stuck a couple of seratches together with adhesiv plaster, got out of khaki into cere- monial white, and taken part in a lawn party, a dinner and an im- promptu ball. at which the meager resources of their official society had been supplemented by a handful of planters and their wives, who had come down the river in their motor hoats, or along the little narrow- rauge railway on their private hand- cars, pushed by perspiring coolies. The squadron had steamed away only this afterncon and the planters had returned to their plantations. But there remained two wandering Amer- feans, a man and his wife, who had come into Raffleton about the time the squadron did, in a ramsrackle launch which they had borrowed from the Brooks Mines, a hundred and fifty miles down the coast, and so there wwas nothing for it but to bring them up to the residency for dinner. Ivia was aware of them hardly more than as presences interposed be- tween herself and her husband and keeping him a long way off. The thing that startled Sylvia was the realization that she was glad to have them there in that capacity. Even when the woman began talk- ing about General Reyes, Sylvia still felt that the subject was a respite in that it engaged her husband’s at- tention. The General Reyes was an Ameri- can cable ship and it was in the hope of getting transportation on her that these two guests of theirs had come to Rafleton themselves. As it turned out, the General Reves had run into the harbor the day before the squad- ron arrived, but stopped only long enough to send a boat ashore for her mails and then steamed away again, under urgent orders from Manila. “We felt pretty blank about that.” the man observed. *It seemed just at first as if we might about as well get a sarong and a kameja apiece and ssttle down here permanently; forget that there was such a place as Tlli- nois on the map.” “You can't expect sympathetic about things like that,” the Honorable Sylvia said. “Because if they didn't happen, we'd hardly ever have any visitors at all. And as long as we've just missed Capt. Burch, it is only right that you should bo provided instead.” “The captain is a great friend of ours,” Carew added. Their guests had only just met us to be very Capt. Burch. It was his two pas- sengers. the Thorndyke - Martins, whom they knew. The four of them had come all the way around from Naples together. The Honoruble Sylvia expressed a mild curiosity to know what the Thorndyke-Martins were like. “It's fortunate for us you don't know them,” said the woman. “You'd ke us for substitutes if you s lovely. Very simple, for her clothes, and lots of fun.” “It would have been a treat to get a look at her,” Sylvia admitted. “We order our clothes by mail from Lon- don. They never get here, and when they do...." She stopped there rather abruptly and added: “I sup- pose we think twice as much about them as she does.” o likes to buy them,” the other woman explained. “but after that, she loses interes She bought some things in Paris that have been fol- lowing her ever since and haven't caught up yet—or hadn't at Singa- pore, and she didn't seem to care. But, of course, where anything is= smart just because vou've got it on, you don’t need to Worry.” * % ¥ ¥ husband’s the affectionate, 1t said, she too, you YLVIA met her and interpreted quickly suppressed smile knew. “That's true of you. wonder, yvou delight Carew wasn't articulate enough to have said a thing like that, but he could mean it and look it. The American, evidently under the impression that the topic of clothes would keep the women amused for a while, turned to the resident, and asked a question about head hunt- ing. But his wife wanted to hear about the head hunters, too. Over her husband's shoulder, out there in the middle of the moon- silvered lawn, Syivia deliberately fixed here eyes on that grim-looking gray stone. That other woman out there—if Sylvia could tell her the story, now, she'd understand. “There’ one thing you've got to get firmly in mind,” Carew said. “and that is that, from the Dyaks' point of view, head hunting, if it's a crime at all, is a crime against property.® A man has a property interest in hiy own head, of course, and equally in any other head he can collect. If he can show fifty of them—fifty human heads, hanging by their hair on poles outside his hut. he's a man of con- sideration in tre community. or ecourse, in a country like this, where people’s physical wants are very few, property is practically all trophies.” “You mean, then.” asked the Amer- fcan, “that when a man cuts off some- body head, it's simply a question of adding to the man’s possessions? Carew nodded. “Here's an illustration.” he went on. “One of the villages back here in the jungle broke loose some time ago, raided another village twenty miles away. and took nine heads." “Fresh heads?" asked the American. “They took them from the shoulders of the villagers and pot from the poles in front of their houses. if that's what you mean,” sald Carew. “Well, the people of the second village, in- stead of attempting a direct reprisal, came down and complained to me. which is what I always try to get them to do. 1 went up to the first village, made them give up their nine heads, and then took them back to the village they had been taken from. That averted a feud between the two villages that might have gone on for years.” “Do you mean,” asked the woman, “that vyou beheaded nine people in the first village?” “No, no," said Carew. “I took the same nine heads, put them in a bag and carried them back to the rela- eye s tives of the people from whom they had been taken.” “But you couldr’t bring the mur- pered people to life again,” the Amer- ican protested. “That’s the point exastly,” sald Carew patiently. “A human life more or less isn't worth getting' excited about. You can't make these people regard life as sacred. What religion they have is against it, and the logic of the situation is against it, too. They don't work, so a life has no lubor value. And in other respects its about the cheapest, commonest thing there is. But they have got a sense of property, and the one hope of building a civilization for them is to build it on that. As they begin to learn to want things their property will take other forms than heads— finery and trinkets to begin with. But one has to go slow, and at pres- ent I respect their property In heads. 1 punish head hunting just as I do any other theft.” “I should think, though,” objected the American, “that there'd be more glory in taking a live head than a dead one.” “Not so much,” Carew explained, “because a man would defend any head he possessed just as enthusias- tically as he would the one that grew on his shoulders. He'll guard a grave.” He broke off there with an apolo- getic little glance at Sylvia. “Oh, yes.” she sald, smiling readily, “tell them about it. They'll be inter- ested.” * o ox % AREW turned and pointed out through the open window behind him. “It comes rather close home,” he said. “My predecessor's wife died out here and is buried there in the middle of the lawn. He Inclosed the grave in sheet iron and put that big granite slab on the top of it to make sure that it wouldn't be rifled by Dyaks. He made me promise, when I came here to take the post (of course, he was half mad at the time), to have it watched day and night. See the Sikh out there now? You can make out his white turban—there, under the tree.” He turned back from the window again and seated himself at the table. “It is rosgh on Sylvia,” he repeat- ed, “a memento mori like that. But I gave the poor chap my word, you see. And, after all, the moral effect on the Dyaks is good. I must guard my own property as sacredly as I guard theirs. Tt's one of the things my prestige depends on. And my pres- tige is practically the only thing I have to govern with.” The Chinese butler had come in as he finished and stood in the doorway awaiting recognition. Jalan," said Carew. “What is it?" ‘Come one picce pleeceman,” said the Chinaman. Carew followed the Chinaman out. There was silence in the big dining room for a minute or two. The Amer- ican woman had been staring out at the grave on the lawn. Now she turned around and looked at Sylvia with a wide wonder in her eyes—a look which flashed instantly into an understanding pity. She wasn't so very much older than Sylvia herself. The warm gush of sympathy, com- ing unexpectedly like that, got over Sylvia's defenses. She gave an ir- repressible shudder, and pressed her hands against her eyes, as if, for just a moment, to shut out a vision. The man guest, who had risen when Carew did and had remained stand- ing, moved quickly away to the win- dow and stood there looking out. The two women might have been alone together. “You're such a wonder," said the American woman unevealy. “You're so cool, and perfect, that one can't realize what it means, unleas you let them see. But I understand now. “You dou’t understand. You don’t know,” said Sylvia. Her guest did not press the point. “Has he gone down to town?’ she asked. “It isn't likely to be anything serious, is it?" “Oh, just a murder or something, sald Sylvia. “It's too quiet there for it to be anything very bad.” The man turned away from the window. He is sending the policeman away and coming back.” he said quietly, and took his place at the table. Sylvia sat up stralght again, and once more pressed her hands against her eyes. She hadn't cried enough to discolor them. She looked from one to the other of her guests with a shaky little smile. “Thank you,” she said, for each of them had done her a service. Carew, coming back into the room, found everything just as he had left it “It was nothing after all, asked Sylvia. 11 have to go down after dinner.” said Carew, “but evervthing'’s all right for the present. The woman" locked up and both the men are dead. then?" * % ¥ ¥ E turned to the American. “It fits in rather with what we were saying,” he began. “A Sikh police- man tried to arrest a woman, and a Malay who was with her slipped a kris into him. The Malay is very excitable, and once he lets his kris taste blood—one of those wavy-bladed daggers, you know—once his kris tastes blood, he's likely to turn per- tectly irresponsible. Westerners call it ‘running amuck.’ It is really noth- ing but a feeling that, since he has broken loose, he may as well make a thorough job of it and kill as many more as possible. That is what he started to do in this case and there was nothing for it but for another policeman to shoot him.” “What had the woman done.” the American wanted to know, “that the first man tried to arrest her for Carew smiled and turned to Slyvia. “You will be interested in that,” he said. “She's a woman who's been working for you up here. She had set her cap for this Malay and, in order to fascinate him, she had stolen What do You suppose? A dozen brass curtain rings. She was wearing them for bracelets half-way up her arm when the policeman arrested her.” “There’s the irony of things.” said the American. “An absurdly trifling act like that, and two men dead as the result of it." “No,” said Carew, “vou look at it that way. Not if you're £oing to get the East straight. Of course, it's too bad about the police- man. But he lost his life doing his duty and that's an ending we for- eigners have to take more or less for granted. Of course, he's as foreign to this situation as I am. But the Malay doesn't matter. You can't blame him for what he did and he'd be the last person, provided you could consult him, to complain of the result. That's all in the day's work. “The thing vou have got to treat seriously is the theft. The fact that the things she stole were perhaps worth about sixpence and that we'd never have discovered the loss of them, doesn't enter into the case. They were very beautiful to her no doubt—highly polished and all, and tempted her. Taking them con- stituted, from her point of view, a serious theft and it's her point of view that I've got to treat it from.” The point absorbed the interest of both men. But the American woman had only half listened. She had hardly taken her eyes from Sylvia's face since Carew had returned. Now mustn't PICKING A VICE PRESIDENT Here We Have an Opportunity to Doge It Out With Nina Wilcox Putnam, America’s Woman Humorist, Who Finds Nation’s Task Extremely Important. ELL. in another few days I suppose we will be hear- ing the usual loud clamor about who is going to be Jur next Vice President The Gimme Boys will be out in force, all crying for the Vice Presi- deney the same as if it was castor oil, or sométhing. You may of noticed how this gen- erally happens. Well, I haven't, myself. I admit it's not so notice- able as all that But every four annums or so, when our folks decide to either have a new Pres. or make up their mind 1o give the old one a renewal of his lease on the White House, I right away commence cxpecting somebody to see the advantages of being Vive Pres. and put in a claim for it. To begin with, the Vice-Presidency is a real nice quiet job. All the year around there ain't practically noth- ing for him to do except open me- morial mectings, open public build- ings, open cans of sardines for the wife and open his eyes in the morn- ing. Of course I can see where the pos- sibllity of the Pres. resigning and the Vice having to o to work would naturally kind of hang over a person and ‘make them nervous when they happened to think of it, but Shucks! We all got some little thing of that kind locked up in our skeletom, and it is a well known saying that pretty near every family has its closet. But to get back to the Vice-Pres. Strange how hard it is for a person to keep their mind on him, even when discussing him, ain’t it? Well, any- ways, it certainly is a funny thing in the most serious sense of the word, the way none of the also-rans of a National Caucus ever seems to be picked for Vice-Pres. Of course it is human nature not to care much about playing 2nd fiddle at any time except in a orchestrs. And yet it seems to me like one ot thw presi- dental ex-possibilities would be the very boy to choose. I suppose what happens is that as a general thing when the big job is filled, the boys on the mourner’s benoh pick up their hats and go right home and then Mr. Chairman, that veteran politiclan of them all, is up against {t when he commences to look around the room and pass seme remark to the effect or by the ‘way, fellers, who'll we have for Vice “BY THIS TIME THERE AINT NOBODY EXCEPT THE JANITOR, SO THEY HAVE TO TAKE HIM.” Pres.? By this time there ain't nobody left except the janitor of the building, so they have to take him. Unless, through some accident such as not being able to get a new shoe back on again, a good man is de- tained in the room. * X k¥ IKELY as not when Mr. Chairman pulled that great American political classic, he looked around the room and seen not only the janitor but an old familiar party face and yells out hey, Teddy or hey, Cal! For the love of tripe come on and be the vice- Pres. nominee, will ya, we all wanner go home! ‘Well now, I got a idea from these two samples of Roosevelt & Coolidge that maybe we intelligent voters had ought to make sure both Vice-can- didates is mot alone men of power, but that they are the sort who can be relied on to keep their batteries charged, the grease cups filled, the engine clean, graphite in the springs, and the brakes in order. So if they have to run the Automobile of State on a moment's notice they can do it as good as the Big Egg himself. Of course when a feller gets to be Vice Pres, why he, being & gentleman, hopes the dear Pres. will stay on the Job forever. I know the feeling. Why lookit here, fellow citizens, and others who are free, twenty-one and registered voters! Do you folks realize that the running of the na- tion which we playfully call the “little-Ole U. 8. A.” is what, if I were not a lady, I would call one hell of a big business job? And what is even further, do you all realize what, in industry, a Viee-Pree. usually is? ‘Why, Gen. mgr. of coursel But do we always pick a good gen. mgr. when we pick Vice-Pres. ma- terial? Nix! All we do is stumble on it by accident once in a while. Leave the party leaders think this over good before they let some of their big bets leave the hall too early. Now boys, don't crowd! Gee! That's just what I am afraid you won't do. I am afraid these few assorted words of mine will fall upon empty heads as per usual, and the importance of who will be Vice-Pres. will be lost in the shuffie for the new presidential deal. In which case I am going to the other extreme. 1 personally myself am going to nominate Laddie Boy for the Vice-Pree. If all the Nation ‘wants is a live door mat with wel- come on it, why not a nice airedale who is already familiar with the ‘White Housa? . Opyright, 9200 CcarLe BERTSCH “THEY KILLED HIM, 1 SUPPOSE, BEFORE HER EYES,” SYLVIA WENT ON. “AND YOU TALK OF PUNISHING HER!” she thrust her chair back from the table rather abruptly. No,” said Sylvia, sit sti.” At that both men looked around at her and Carew sprang to his feet. “My dear!” he cried in consterna- tion. “What's the matter?’ For her face had gone as white as flour and she was clutching the edge of the table tightly with both hands. But she shook her head at him and said in a halt inarticulate plea that he stay where he was. And, in a moment, she got command of her voice. “I—I just wanted to be sure I un- derstand what you mean,” she said “You don’'t mean that you're going to punish that woman seriously for— for nothing? Because it was nothing. They weren't worth anything to us. We're using wooden rings in the place we got them for. And—and perhaps they meant—everything to her.” Carew answered gently, but it was as if from a long way off. “Don’t upset yourself about it. my dear. You've had a pretty hard week, I suspect, and you're badly over- wrough Sylvia's color came flooding back again. He was apologizing for her to their guests. The real issue had not got his attention at all. “I'm not tired nor overwrought in the least,” she said. “I don't want vou to think about me. I w-want you to think about that pitiable little woman. Can't you see? She had to have those things. That's something that might happen to—to anybody. And she was afraid to ask me for them. That's the heartbreaking part of it. And now her man's dead—that she took them for. They killed him, 1 suppose, before her eves. And you talk of punishing he Now it was Carew whose color faded out under his coat of tan. Their two guests, forgotten, stared at their empty glasses. “If you want to debate it as an abstract proposition,” said Carew slowly, “I'll say that if the woman is allowed to keep the spoils she can probably attract another man who will suit her just as well. I think you'd recognize that, it she happened not to be somebody you knew as an individual. I have had to punish be- fore in cases that were personal to me. I've done it because I knew that the only hope for beginning to civil- ize these people is the justice that 1 hold in my hand. There are two or three hundred thousand of them up- country there, who are beginning to take my law. They don't know it as an abstract thing. It's something of mine. If they don’t raid and murder as much as they did. it's because they are beginning to take my notion that it's better to leave another man's goods alone. And if they see I don't believe it myself—" He brought his hands down softly but solidly on the table. “Even as a matter of self-preserva- tion,” he went on, “the thing is im- portant. Against a quarter of a mil- lion of them I've got a hundred and twenty-five Sikh policemen who would stand up and be butchered for my word. One of them lost his life that way tonight.” * % * ¥ “it's all right. THE'RE was a sllence after that.| The American drew in a long breath and let it out with a rush. Finally Sylvia spoke, doggedly and dully, not as one who hopes any more, but as one,who plays his last card. “You're right in general, I suppose. T hadn’t thought of it that way. But, just for this once, 'm golg to ask a favor—that you don't punish the woman who stole—the curtain rings.” For just.a moment a blaze of cold fire lighted up Carew's blue eyes and then it faded. He pressed his lips to- gether before he spoke. “We'll talk about it in the morn- ing,” he said gently. “And you won't ask me that favor again. You will have seen by then what it means.” “There's s—something else,” sald Sylvia. But Carew had pushed back his chair and risen from the table. “I think I'd better go down to the town,” he 2aid, addressing his guests, “gna see that it is really quiet. We don't want any more murders to- night. Sylvia sald “Wait!” But it was only in & whisper and he was already gone. The silence lasted until she had seen him pass the window and cross the lawn. Then she spoke. “You see, I am a thief, too,” said the Honoradie Sylvia “You don't mean Mterally?™ It was the man who asked the ques- tion. Her bare nod of assent w encugh to answer him. He did not go on to ask what she had stolen. After all, it didn’t matter. And now she waited for her hus- band to come back from meting out justice — logical, ary justice— upon the little Malay woman who had stolen the curtain rings. He was all she had—all she loved or wanted the world. And she was alone with him in that remotest corner of it I suppose situations like that are not uncommon. This one is getting told about because it just happened that my wife and 1 were the two American guest at the residency that night, and that Sylvia told it to us— told it in many ragged little frag- ments, under a pressure of panic and desperation that forced her to clutch at anything that looked like a sym- pathetic hand, The story was simple enough. Two days after her husband had gone off into the jungle to secure his nine heads the Maintz, from Singa- pore,came into theharbor at Rafeton. The new monsoon was blowing at the one precise angle which gave it access to the harbor, and two big packing cases, both addressed to the residency, were dropped overboard in an attempt to land them. By the time they were rescued and got ashore the consignee’'s marks were pretty well obliterated. But both of them were brought forthwith to the residency. Now, the Honorable Sylvia had ex- pected a box. She had come out to the Far East more than two years before, amply equipped for a casual glance at the tropics. She had varied the plan by staying and marrying Carew. The necessity for replenish- ing this wardrobe became pressing, and she ordered more clothes by mail from London. One of the two boxes undoubtedly contained these clothes. But in view of their recent immer- sion in sea water it devolved upon the Honorable Sylvia to open both boxes at once. As it happened the box she opened contained the purchases which Mrs, Thorndyke-Martin had made in Paris —a lot of indecently lovely stock- ings and underclothes, a couple of frocks and a certain miraculous hat. They had been beautifully packed, and the brief immersion of their box in the water of the harbor hadn’t damaged them a bit. For one delirious moment Sylvia thought they were hers. But it didn't need, really, the discovery of the Pa- risian modiste’s bill to convince her of her mistake. Then she opened the other box, which contained her own purchases. She found them just as ghastly and provincial and absurd as in her worst anticipations she had pictured them. And it was, while they were all spread out in her blg shabby boudoir in the residency, the butler had brought in the wireless message an- neces: nouncing the prospective visit of the South Aslatic squadron at Raffleton. * * 4 OU will have to think a minute to realize just what that visit im- ported to Sylvia. Admiral Etheridge, who commanded the fleet, was an old friend of her mother's. And the voung flag licutenant who had signcd the message was a sort of second cousin of her ow Probabl If a dozen of the officers she would be expected to entertain were boys she had danced and flirted with in the old d The visit meant that S old world was coming for a look at her. Her old world. had treated her badly; there was no doubt that. Tt might have pitied her a little for falling in love with Carew, but it had shown itself horrified, coldly impla- cable and at last insolently derisive when she insisted on marrying him. It had been fiercely satisfactory to send the old world overboard, in the wonderful blaze of passion and pride and self-abandonment that had given her to Carew. And those fires were blazing still. He had never disap- pointed her once. The price she had paid for him weighed not a grain against the complete and poignant happiness he brought her. Her old world was welcome to come and look. But—and here the bright red burned in her cheeks and her finger- nails pressed hard into her small palms—but they must not be allowed to come and laugh, for their laughter would be at her husband rather than her. “We remember the Sylvia he took. And this is what he has made her—this pathetically dowdy little of | colonial, trying to dress as she imag- ines people are dressing back home.” She looked at things that had come in her own box from London. And then she looked at what Mrs. Thorn- dyke-Martin had bought to pass the time in Paris. They must be nearly alike in size and figure, and clothes don’t have to fit nowadays anyway. A half dozen deftly placed pins would make everything right. Dressed like that, how she could face that old world of hers! How confidently could she bid them welcome and entertain them and send them away again, wondering! Even if her husband did not return in time to see his triumph and make it perfect. For you can understand, can’t you, that it would be his triumph rather than hers? The Honorable Sylvia put on the hat, and a great resolution formed itself in her soul. The Thorndyke- Martins were expected to get in on the General Reyes, along with Capt. Burch, a day or two before the squad- ron arrived. Sylvia would go to Mrs. Martin and buy or beg or borrow those clothes. Whatever happened, when the admiral and the flag lieu- tenant and the rest came ashore, they should find her wearing them. And then the General Reyes came into the harbor, and without drop- ping anchor at all sent a boat ashore for mails. There was no time to ex- FOR ONE DELIRIOUS MOMENT SYLVIA THOUGHT THEY WERE plain, to beg nor offer to buy. The Honorable Sylvia could either wrap up Mrs. Thorndyke-Martin's clothes and send them aboard or she could steal them, which latter act involved jus: letting the boat zo back without them. And that is what she did. “YJTHCIV'T at first scrutinizing the moral quality of the act at all, she flushed and smiled at herself in rlass when first she saw herself rrayed in her spoils, with noth more than amused sense of jef. It was not until her hus- band came back, on the afternoon of the garden party, and she saw the look that came into his face, as le caught his first glimpse of her, that the first misgiving came One of the elements which went to make up her adoration for him was something akin to fear. At the very core of the man, accounting perhaps for h almost miraculous power over savage peoples, was a saintlike sort of austerity—an Ark of the Cove- nant, inaccessible to the intrusion of mercly human loves or fears. Sylvia knew it was there, knew that even her hand might not be laid upon the veil before it. But it was only grad- ually that she realized how this act of hers would look when brought for judgment before that shrine. It scemed like the mockery of a malicious fate that gave the subjeet of the talk the turn it had taken. Here was a deadly parable that the Prophet Nathan himself could har have improved upon. The poor, frightened little native wo n who had had to steal in order that she might be finely arrayed. Would John Carew be willing to show one of those woman thieves more mercy than he was prepared to show the other? The sudden flare of cold anger that had come up into his blue eyes an- swered that question, if it had not been answered before. The man was a fanatie, of course; he had in hir the quality of logically carrying out a valid idea to remorseles nd in human conclusions—a quality thar has planted many a stake and set the torch to many a pyre. There was a silence for a while after Sylvia had come to the end of her story I looked across at my wife, Luck- ily, women have not our passion for abstract morality. They act on tha particular event as it comes along. “If you will pack up those clothe: said my wife, “I will take them bac to Mi Martin, and then, you e, you will only have borrowed them.” I saw my wife smile “For that matter,” she on. “ don't see why you haven't really borrowed them from me. I'll take the { responsibility for Mrs. Martin, Tve lent them to you and now, if vou've finished with them, I can take them back. There isn't anything Wwrol about that, is there™ Sylvia sat up and gazed out throust the window at the lighted patch of jawn with the big granite slab in the midle of it. Then she rose. “PIl get them for you,” said Sylvia My wife went with her, and I lighted a fresh cigar and strolled out on the balcons As it happened, we didn’t see Carew again. Our cab came for us before | his return from the village, and we | drove down to the Rest House under |a heap of bandboxes. The Sarah | Bira came in during the night and | we sailed on her the next morning for | Cebu. We found the Thorndyke-Martins< in Manila and gave Mrs. Martin her clothes, and it needed all but foreible restraint to keep her from shipping them straight back to Sylvia. Last Christmas we got & little eard of greetings from Mr. and the Hon- orable Mrs. John Carew. “Much love,” Sylvia had written on it, “and a world of thanks™ (Copyright, 1924) —_——— A Muscle Builder. How many of you fellows like strong-arm stunts? Good! Then you'ly all be interected in the one I'm going to tell you about now. They sar many years ago the Indian braves used to do this same thing just to keep limbered up. I also heard that in Merry Old England Robin Hood = men practiced this exercise. Get a smooth, stout stick about three or four feet long (a strong broom handle will do nicely). Tken scratch a straight line on the ground as shown in the picture. Your op- ponent stands across the line from you and both of you take a strong #Tip on the stick. The object of this stunt is to see which boy can twist the stick out ef the other's hands without bel ed across the line CAPN went