The evening world. Newspaper, July 28, 1914, Page 17

4 [a AEW crue. CRIME-MYSTERY STORY BY THE © Movsrigat. 1914, by Bovte Meriti Co.) STNOVaIs OF PRECEDING CHALTERS, Caralet, Fnalishmen, who tas emigrated ‘s retorning to Epgiand = His eabin mate on the steamship from Italy on is ‘Tore, an American, Ine Coralet shoute: “Henry Craven Both Carniet ani Tove remenler Cravens & erooked financier, whic bas seliod Cazalet’s old Diy friend, Seruton, sent Pome and bas hed CHAPTER iv. (Continsed,) Down the River. UT that's as quick as the train, my good fellow!" blustered Cazalet. “Quicker,” sald = the young fellow without dipping hia cig- arette, ‘if you were going by the old Bouthwestern!” The very man, and especially the manners that made or marred him, ‘was entirely new to Cazalet as a pro- duct of the old country. But be had come from the bush, and he felt as though he might have been back there but for the smoll of petrol and the cry of motor-aora from end to end of those teeming Gullies of bricks and mortar. He bad accompanied his bi just as far as the bureau of Jermyn street hotel. Any room they liked, and he would be back some time before midnight; that was his card, they could enter his name for themselves. He departed, pipe in mouth, sper knife tn one hand, plug tobacco in the other; and remarks were passed in Jermyn street as the taxi bounced out west in ballast. But indeed it waa too fine > morn- ing to waste another minute indoors, even to change one’s clothes, if Caza- let had possessed any better than the ones he wore and did not rather glory in his rude attire. He was not ring leggings, and he did wear a collar, but he quite Suv that even so he might have cut ® izionunions dgure on the fags of Aeisington Gore; no, now It was the crvwded Iige “treet, and pow it was humble Maiwmeramitn. He bad told his smart young mao to be sure and go that way. Me had been at Paul's school as a boy— wanted waus landmarks as he ‘This one towered and was 1@ as nerriy in a dash as @ great ma mounrain could. 4+ seemed to Cazalet, but perhaps bo expected it to seem, that the red Was a little meliower, the ivy a good deal bigher on the great warm walls, He noted the time by the ruthless old clock, Jt was after one already; he Would miss bis lunch. What did that matter? Lunch? Drunken men do not miss their meals, and Cazalet was simply and comfortably drunk with the delight of being back, He had never dreamed of its getting into his head like this; at the time he did not realize that it had. That was the beauty of his bout. He knew well enough what he was doing and seeing, but inwardly he wan literally blind, Yesterday was left behind and for- gotten like the Albert Memorial, and to-morrow was still as distant as the Gea, if there were auch things as to- Morrow and the sca, Meanwhile what vivid miles of daz- sling life, what @ subtle autumn flavor in the air, how cool in the shadows, how warm in the eun; what a sparkling old river it was, to be sure; and yet, if those weren't the first of the autumn tints on the tr in Castlenau. There went a funeral, on its way to Mortlake! The taxi overhauled it at # callous speed, Cazalet just had time to tear off his great soft hat, It wae actually the first funeral he had seen eince his own fathe! wonder his radiance suffered a brief eclipse, But in another moment he ‘was out on Barnes's Common, ‘Then, in the Lower Richmond Road, the smart young man began to change peed and crawl, and at once there was something fresh to think about, The Venture and its team of gra. Oxford and London was trying to pass a motor-bus just ahead, and a gray leader was behaving as though “it also had just landed from the bush, Cazalet thought of a sailing ship age the wits old Venue totts—and te dreadnought, and the satling rown up into the wind, Then red how one of Cobb's bush weuld have behaved, and it might have played the barge! t+ had been the bicycle age when he nt away; n was the motor me, and the novelty and contrast ere endless to a simple mind under the influence of forgotten yet inccear- ingly fusniliar scenes. But nothing was lost on Cazalet that great morning; even a milk-foat en'ranced him, itself enchanted, wich its tati can turned to gold and silver fn the sun, But now he was on all but holy ground, 2: was not so hoty with these ine i not see) leading down to the river, Aa et Atma GKOLD YEO OGLOUYUCR 8 DE SOTADOUHD F fernal electric trams; still he knew every inch of ft, and now, thank goodness, he was off the lines at last “Slower!” he shouted to bis smart young man. He could not say that no notice was taken of the command. But a wrought-iron gate on the left, with ® covered way leading up to the house, and the garden (that he could and the stables (that ne could) a: the road--all that was pt and gone in a veritable twinkling, And though he turned round and looked back, Jt wa. only to set a sightless stare from sightless win- cows, to catch on a toard “This De- lightful Freehold Residence With Grounds and Stabling, ind to echo the epithet with an appreciative grunt. Five or six minutes Iater ths emart young man was driving really slowly along @ narrow road between patent wealth and blatant semi-gentility; on the left good grounds, shaded by ce. dar and chestnut, and on the right 8 row of hideous little houses as pre- tentious as any that ever let for forty pounds within forty minutes of Wa- terloo. “This can’t be it!” shouted Caza- let. “It can't be herc—stop! Stop! T tell you! A young woman had appeared in ‘one of the overpowering wooden por- ticoes; two or three swinging strides were bringing her down the silly little path to the wicket-gate with the idiotic name; there was no time to open it before Cazalet blundered up, and shot his Nand across to get a grasp as tirm and friendly as he gave. thelr two nursery names, hers no improvement on the proper monosyllable, and his @ rather dubi- ous token of pristine prociivities. But out both came as if they were children still, and chliidren who had been just long enough apart to start witb @ good honest mutual stare. “You aren't a bit altered,” declared the man of thirty-three, with a note not entirely tactful ip bis admiring voive. old chum only laughed. she cried. “But you're not altered enough. Sweep, I'm dis- appointed in you. Where's your beard?" “I had it off the other day. I always meant to,” he explained, “before the end of the voyage. I wasn’t going to land like a wild man of the woods, you know!” “Weren't you! I call it mean. Her scrutiny became severe, but softened jain at the elght of his wide-awake and curiously character- less, shapeless sult. “You may well look!” he cried, de- lighted that she should, “They're aw- ful old duds, I know, but you would think them a wonder if you saw where they came from; a regular roudside shanty in a forsaken town- ship at the back beyond. Ex- traordinary cove, the chap who made them; puts in every etich himself, learns Shakespeare while he's at it, know Lindsay Gordon and Marcus Clarke"— “I'm sorry to interrupt, sald Blanche, laughing, “but there's your taxi ticking up twopence every quar- ter of an hour, and I can't let it go on without warning you. Where have you come from?" He told her with a grin, was round- ly reprimanded for bis extravagance, but bragened it out by giving the smart young man a sovereign before her eyes, After that she said he had better come In before the neighbors came out and mobbed him for a mill. ionaire. And he followed her Indoors and upstairs, into a little new den crowd- ed with some of the big old things be could remember in @ very difter- ent actting But if the room was smail it had @ balcony that was hardly any small- er, on top of that unduly imposing porch; and out there, overlooking tuo fine grounds opposite, were basket chairs and a table hot with the Indian summer aun, “T hope you are not shocked at my abode,” said Blanche. “I'm afraid I can't help it tf you are, It's just big enough for Martha and me; you re- member old Martha, don't you? You'll have to come and see her, but she'll be horribly disappointed about your beard!" Coming through the room, stopping to greet a picture and a bookcase (filling a wall each) as old friends, Cazalet had descried a photograph of himself with that appendage. He had threatened to take the beastly thing away, and Blanche had told him he had better not. But it did not occur to Cazalet that It was the photograph to which Hilton Toye had referred, or that Toye must have been in this very room to see It. In these few hours he had forgot- ten the man's existence, at least in so far as it associated itself with Next We-! an Th, .' ORCAS RAWAL ALLO TLLAY LL BLLA DPYLETOPLU MOYO AAO ALTE 3 ©d390o Blanche Macnair. 8 all wanted he continued, two of them are in the same county it would have meant a caravan. Be- n't going to be trans- Planted at my age. Here one has everybody one ever knew, except those who escape by emigrating, aim- ply at one’s mercy on a@ bicycle. There's more golf and tennis than I can find time to play; and I atill keep the old boat in the old boathouse at Littleford, because it hasn’t let or sold yet, I'm sorry to say.” “So I saw as I passed,” said Caza- let. “That board hit me hard!” “The pla eing empty hits me harder,” rejoined the last of the Macnairs, “It's going down in value every day like all the other property about here, except this sort. Mind where you throw that match, Sweep! I don't want you to set fire to my pampas-grass; it's the only tree I've wot!” Cazalet laughed; she was making him laugh quite often. But the pampas-grass, like the rest of the ridiculous little garden in front, waa obscured if not overhung by the bal- cony on which they sat. And the subject seemed one to change, “It was simply glorious coming down,” he said, “I wouldn't swap that three-quarters of an hour for a bale of wool; but, I say, there are some changes! The whole show in the streets is different. I could have spotted it with my eyes and ears shut. They used to smell like a stable, and now they smell like a lamp. “And I used to think the old cab- bles could drive, but their job was child's play to the taxi man's! We were at Hammersmith before I could light my pipe, and almost down here before it went out! think how every mortal thing on the appealed to me, “The only blot was a funeral at Barnes; it seemed auch a ain to be buried on a day like this, and a fel- low like me just coming home to en- joy himself!" He had turned grave, but not graver than at the actual moment coming down, Indeed, he was eim- ply coming down again, for her bene- fit and his own, without an ultertor trouble until Blanche took him up with a long fuce of her own, “We've bad a funeral here. pose you know?” “Yes, I know. Her chair creaked as she leaned forward with an enthusiastic so- lemnity that would have made her shriek if she had seen herself; but it had no such effect on Cazalet. ‘I wonder who can have done it?” “S80 do the police, and they don't look much like finding out!" “It must have been for his watch and money, don’t you think? And yet they say he had so many ene- mies!” Cazalet kept silence; but she thought he winced, “Of cour it must have been the man who ran out of the drive he concluded hastily. “Where were you when it happened, Sweep?” Somewhat hoarsely he was recall- ing the Mediterranean movements of the Kaiser Fritz, when at the firet mention of the vessel's name he was firmly heckled, “Sweep, you don't mean to say you came by a German steamer?" ‘3 do, It was the first going, and why should I waste a week? Be- sides, you can generally get a cabin to yourself on the German line,” “So that's why you're here before the end of the month,” said Blanche. “Well, I call it most unpatriotic; but T sup- ONE oF “THE ‘MOST UNUSUAL STORIES EVER WRITTEN. t's Conmiere Novel “vening World © © ® © ® ” S aaREEEEE? AEREEERREEEEEEEna But you can't o: «Hee KWHast COWOU THINK OF Fr Now 3 DDODDDHDHGDOGDHDOGDOGOGDHDGGODOOSHHODGDOHOQODSIOOOGD the cabin to yourself was certainly some excuse.” “That reminds me!" he exclaimed, “I hadn't it to myself all the way; there was another fellov. in with me from Genoa; and the last night on board it came out that he knew you!” “Who can it have been?” “Toye, ula name was. Hilton Toye.” “An American man! Oh, but I know him very well,” said Blanche in tone both etrained and cordial. “He's great fun, Mr. Toye, with his delightful Americanisms and the per- fectly delightful way he says them!” Cazalet puckered like the primitive man he was when taken at all by surprise; and that anybody, much less Blanche, should think Toye, of all people, either “delightful” or “great fun” was certainly a surprise to him, if it was nothing else. it was nothing else, to bis 6 knowledge; still, he was rather ready to think that Blancho wan blushing, and forgot, if indeed he bad been in a fit st to see it at the time, that she had paid bhim- self the same high compliment across the gate. On the whole, it may be said that Cazalet was ruffled without feeling seriously disturbed as to the essen- tial issue which alone leaped to his mind. “Where did you meet the fellow?" he inquired, with the suitable ad- mixture of confidence and amuse- ment. “In the first instance, at En berg.” “Engelberg! Where's that?” “Only one of those places in Swit. zerland where everybody goes nowa- days for what they call winter sports.” She was not even smiling at bis vogant ignorance; she was mereiy jaining one geographical point and another of general information. A close observer might have thought her almost anxious not to identify herself too closely with = popular craze. “I dare say you mentioned it,” sald Cazalet, but rather as though he was wondering why sho had not. “I dare say I didn't! Everything won't go into an annual letter, It was the winter before last—I went out with Betty and her husband,” “And after that he took a place down here?” “Yes. Then I met him on the river the following summer, and found he'd got rooms in one of the Nell Gwynne if you call that a place.” But there was no more to see; there never had been much, but now Blanche was standing up and gaging out of the balcony into the belt of singing sunshine between the op- posite side of the road and the in- visible river acres away. “Why shouldn't we go down to you go out of town matter. reading for six cents a week. country dealer has not by the foremost living authors, Are You Going Away for Vacation? c Evening “World Daily Magssine: Tuesday Littieford and get out the boat it you're really going to make an after- noon of it?" she eald. “But you must eee Martha first; and making herself fit to be seen you must take something for the good of the house, I'll bring it to you on a lordly tray.” She brought him siption, stoppered bottle, a silver biscuit-box of ancient memories, and left him alone with them some little time; for the young mistress, like her old retainer in an- other minute, was simply dying to make herself more presentable. Yet when she had done eo, and oame back like snow, in a shirt and skirt just home from the laundry, she saw that he did not gee the difference. His devouring eyes shone neither more nor less; but he had also voured every biscuit in the box, though he had begun by vowing that he had lunched In town, and stuck to the fable still. Old Martha had known him ail his life, but best at the period when he used to come to nursery tea at Little- ford. She declared she would have known bim anywhere as he was, but she simply hadn't recognized him in that photograph with his beard. “I can see where it’s been,” sa:d Martha, looking him in the lower temperate zone. “But I'm so glad you've had it off, Mr. Cazalet.” “There you are, Blanchie!” crowed Cuzalet. “You sald she'd be disap- pointed, but Martha's got better taste.” “It fan’t that, earnestly, “It's man who w 8! said Martha because the dreadful geen running out of the drive, at your old home, he had a beard! It's in all the notices about him, and that's what's put me against them and makes me glad you've had yours off,’ Blanche turned to him with too ready @ smile; but then she was really not such @ great age as she pretended, and she had never been in better apirita in her life. “You hear, Sweep! I call it rather lucky for you that you were”—— But just then she saw his face, and remembered the things that had said about Henry Craven ty the Cazalets’ friends, even ten years ago, when she really had been a girl, CHAPTER V. An Untimely Visitor. HE really was one atill, for } in these days it is an elastic term, and in Blanche's case there was no apparent rea- son why {It should ever cease to apply, or to be applied by every decent tongue except her own. If, however, it be conceded that she herself had reached the purely men- tal stage of some self-consclousness on the point of girlhood, it can not be too clearly stated that it was the only point In which Blanche Macnair had ever been self-conscious in her life. Much the best tennis player among the ladies of the neighborhood, she drove a most unbecomingly long ball at golf, and never looked better than when paddling her old canoe or punt- ing in the old punt. And yet, -his wonderful September afternoon, she did somehow luok oven better than at either of those con- genial pursuits, and that long before they reached the river; in the empty houne, which bad known her as baby child and grownup girl, to the co panton of some part of all three stages, she looked a more lustrous end lovelier Blanche than he remem- bered even of old. But she wan not really lovely tn the least; that also must be put be- yond the pale of misconception. Hor hair was beautiful, and perhaps her skin, and, in some lights, her eyes: the rest was not. It was yellow hair, not golden, and zalet would have given all he had about him to see it down again as in the oldest'of old daya; but there was more gold in her ekin, for so the sun had treated it; and there was even hint or glint (in certain lights, be it repeated) of gold mingling with the Pure hazel of her eyes. But in the dusty shadows of the empty house, moving like @ sun- beam across Its bi boards, standing out against the discolored walls in the place of remembered pictures not to be compared with her, it was for vacation you may find it Is When difficult and costly to providé yourself with the right sort of reading Why send to the city for novels at $1.25 or $1.50 each or buy them at a fancy price in some country store? You can supply yourself with the best, most delightful summer By subscribing to The Evening World for the rest of the summer Il secure a complete novel each week. Not some old book a en able to sell, but the finest up-to-date fiction Bear this in mind, not only for yourself but for any of your friends who expect to spend thftir vacations in the country, omy July =F aller THE THOUSANDTH WOMAN By E. W. Hornung en ta Ly % 28. 1914 DIOD GOOHDGTHISS: there that she was all golden and still a girl. They poked their noses into the old bogy-hole under the nursery staira, they swung the gate at the head of the next fight; they swore to finger- marks on the pan that were all the walle of the top story, and they had « laugh in every corner, childish crimes to reconstruct, quite bitter battles to fight over again, but never a lump in either throat that the other could have guessed was there. And #6 out upon the leafy lawn, shelving abruptly to the river; round first, however, to the drying-green where the caretakers’ garments were indeed drying unashamed; but they knew each other well enough to Jaugh aloud, had picked each other up much further back than the point of parting ten years ago, almost as far as the days of mixed cricket with & toy eet, on that very green. there waa the poor old green- xeing in every slender tim- ber, broken as to every other cob- webbed pane, empty and debased within; they could not bring them- selves to enter here. Last of all there was the summer schoolroom over the boathouse, quite apart from the house itself; acene of such safe yet reckless revels; in ite very aura late Victorian! It lay hidden in ivy at the end of a Now neglected path; the bow-windows overlooking the river were framed in ivy, Ike three matted, whiskered, dirty, happy faces; one, with its lower sash propped open by a broken plant pot, might have been grinning a toothless welcome to two once leading apirits of the place. Cazalet whittled a twig and wedged that sash up altogether; then he sat himself on the alll, his long legs in- side. But his knife had reminded him of his plug tobacco, And bis plug tobacco took him as straight back to the bush as though the unsound floor had changed under their feet into a magic carpet. “You simply have it put down to the man’s account in the station books. Nobody keeps ready money ‘up at the bush, not even the price of a plug like this; but the chap I'm telling you about (I can see him now, with his great red beara and freckled fists) he swore I was charg- ing him for half a pound more than he'd ever had. I was station store- keeper, you seo: it was quite the be- ginning of things, and I'd havo had to pay the few bob myself, and ba made look so amall that I shouldn't have had ® soul to call my own on the run. “So I fought him for the differ- ence; we fought for twenty minutes behind the wood-heap; then he gave me best, but I had to turn Ip till I could see again." “You don't mean that he*— Blanche had looked rather disgus' ed the moment before; now she was all truculent suspense and indigna- tion. “Beat me?" he cried, “Good Lord, no; but there was none too much In it" Fires died down in her hazel ¢ lay lambent as soft moonlight, fiick- ered into laughter before he had seen the fre. 'm afraid you're a very danger- ous person,” @aid Blanche. “You've got to be,” he assured hei “it's the only way. Don't take a word from anybody, unless you mean him to wipe bis boots on you. I soon found that out. I'd have given some- thing to have learned the noble art before I went out. Did I ever tell you how it wan TI first came across old Venus Potts?” He had told her at great length, to the exclusion of about every other tople, In the second of the annual let- tors, and throughout the series the inevitable name of Venus Potts had seldom cropped up without some allu- sion to that Homeric encounter. But tt was well worth while having it all over again with the Intricate and picaresque embroidery of a tongue far mightier than the peo hitherto employed upon the incident. Poor Blanche had almost to hold her nose over the primary cause of battle; but the dialogue was delight- I, and Cazalet himself made a most gallant and engaging figure as he sat on the sill and reeled it out. He had always been a fluent teller of any happening, and Blanche a ready commentator, capable of ri ing the general level of the enter- tainment at any moment. But after all these centuries it was fun enough to listen as long as he liked to go on; and perhaps she saw that he had more scope where they were than he could have had in the boat, or it may have been an unrealized #pell that bound them both to thetr bare old haunt; but there they were a good twenty minutes later, 4 old Venus Potts waa still on the magic tapla, though Cazalet had dropped his boasting for a curtously humble, enger and yet ineffectual veln, “Old Venus Potts!" he kept ejacu- lating. “You couldn't help liking bin And he'd like you, my word!" “In bis wife nice?” Blanche wanted to know; but she was looking #o in- tently out her window, at the oppo- site end of the bow to Cazalet's, that a man of the wider world might have thought of something else to talk about. Out her window she looked past a willow that had been part of the old life, In the direction of an equally tybical silhouette of patient anglers anchored in a punt; they had not raised a rod between them during ali this time that Blanche had been out in Australia; but as a matter of fact she never saw them, since, vastly to the credit of Cazalet's descriptive powers, she waa out in Australia still “Nelly Potts? he said. “Oh, a Jolly good sort; you'd be awful pals. “Should we?" said Blanche, just amiling at her invia! “I know you would,’ with imm@nse conviction. she can't do the things you do, but she can ride, my word! So she ought to, when she's lived there all her life, ‘The rooms aren't much, but the vi andas are what count most; they're better than any rooms. There are two distinct ends to the atation—It's lke two houses; but of course the barracks were good enough just for me.” She knew about the bachelors’ bar- racks; the annual letter had been really very full; and then she was still out there, cultivating Nelly Potts on @ very deep veranda, though her atraw hat and straw hair remained in contradictory evidence against a Very dirty window on the Middlesex bank of the Thames, It was a shame of the September sun to show the dirt as it waa doing; not only was there a great steady pool of sunlight on the unspeakable floor, but a doddering reflection from the river on the disreputable celling. Caxalet looked rather despera from one to the other, and both the calm pool and the rough were broken by shadows, one more impressionistic than the other, of a straw hat over a stack of straw hair, that bad not gone out to Australia—yet. And of course just then a step sounded outside somewhere on some gravel. Confound those caretakers! What were they doing, prowling about? “I say, Blanchie!” he blurted out. “1 do believe you'd like it out there, a sportswoman like you! I believe you'd take to it like a duck to water.” He had floundered to his feet as weil. He was standing over her, feeling bis way like a gré fatuous coward, so some might have thought. But it really looked as though Blanche was not attending to what he did aay; yet neither was she watching her little anglers stamped in jet upon a alivery stream, nor even noeing more of Nelly Potts in the Australian veranda, She had come home from Australia and come in from the river, and she was watching the open door at the other end of the old schoolroom, lis- tening to those confounded steps coming nearer and nearer—and Caz- alet was gazing at her as though he ally had ald something that de- served an answer. “Why, Miss Blanc! crled a voice. “And your old lady-in-waiting figured 1 should fad you flowa Hilton Toye was already a landa- man and a Londoner from iop to toe. He was perfectly droased-—for Bond Street—and his native simplicity of bearing and address placed him as surely and firmly in the present picture, He did not look the least bit out of it, But Cazalet did, in an instant; his old bush clothes changed at once into a@ merely shabby suit of despicable cut; the romance dropped out of them and thelr wearer, as he stood like w trussed turkey-cock and watched a bunch of hothouse flowers presented to the lady with a little gem of natural, courteous and yet characteristically racy speech. To the lady, mark you, for she was one, on the spot, and Cazalet was a man again, and making a mighty ef- fort to behave himself because the hour of boy and girl was over, “Mr, Cazalet,” said Toye, “I guess you want to know what in thunder I'm doing on your tracks s0 soon, It's hog-luck, sir, because I wanted to see you quite a lot, but I never thought I'd strike you right here, Did you hear the new “No! What? There was no need to inquire as to the class of news; the immediate past had come back with Toye into ‘azu- Jet's life, and even in Blanche's pres- ence, even tn her schoolroom, the otd days had flown into their proper place and size in the perspective “They've made an arrest,” sald ‘Toye; and Cazalet nodded as though he had quite expected It, which set Blanche off trying to remember something he had s#aid at the othe house; but she had not succeeded when she noticed the curious pallor of his chin and forehead “Beruton?” he just as f air! This morning, ton Toye. “You don't mean the poor man?” cried Blanche, looking from one to the other, “Yes, he does,” sald Hil. sald Cazalet gloom- BY_F L. PACKARD. 9 int A ROMANCE OF LOVE AND OF SUPREME SACRIFICE, GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN BEQDOODDDDOIOG? A Complete Novel Each Week in THE EVENING WORLD Stands Will Cost You $1.25, You Get It for bey or OEDOOOIGN He stared out at the rivor, ily. nothing in his turn, though one of anglers was actually busy with reel. But t thought Mr. Seruton still Blanche remembered Bim,” remembered dancing with aim; 686” did not Ike to say. “in prison.” we “He came out the other day.” sighed | Cazalet. “But how like the police aif) | 7 over! Give a dog a bad name, and trust them to hunt it down and shoot it at sight!" RY “L judge it’s not so bad as all in this country,” said Hilton Tepe, “That's mors like the police theory about Scruton, | guess, bar ce the b “When did you hear of it? re Cazalet : “It was on the tape at the Savoy when I got there. So I made an ime upon Miss Blanche. You see, I kind of Interested In all you'd" etd me about the case.” “Well, that was my end of the eit. uation, As luck and management would have it between them, I wags a time to hear your man”--— “Not my man, please! You thought of him yourself,” sald Cazatet sharphy. | “Well, anyway, [ was in time @& hear the proceedings opened againet him. They were all over in about @ minute. He was remanded till next week.” “How did he look?" and, “Had Be & beard?" demanded Cazalet aga. Blanche attnultaneousty. “Ho looked like @ sick man,” sald Toye, with something more than his usual deliberation in answering oF king questions, “Yes, Miss Blanche, he had a beard worthy of a free base zen.” ‘They let them grow one, if ther like, before they come out,” sald Cam alet, with the nod of knowledge. “Then I guess he was a wise Gian not to take it off,” rejoined Hilton Toye. “That would only prejudieg his case, if It's going to be one of identity, with that head gardener” playing lead in the witness stand.” “Old Savage!” snorted Casalet, “Why, he was a dotard in our times they couldn't hang a dog on bis*€vi- by ‘a have It than circumstantial evidenos, wouldn't you, Mr. Toye?” No, Mise Blanche, I would net” plied Toye, with unhesitating eam- dor, “The worst evidence in the world, in my opinton, and I've given the matter some thought, is the evidence of identity He turned to Cazalet, who had Bex — trayed a quickened interest in bis views: “Shall [ tell you why? Think bow often you're net so sure if you have seen a man before or if you never” have! You kind of shrink from mod- ding, or else you nod wrong. If you | didn't ever have that feell ten you're not like amy other ‘maa & know.” “I've bad- “L have!” cried Caaalet, it all my life, even in the wilds, but I never thought of it before.” “Think of it now," said Toye, “aa@ - you'll see there may be flaws to the — best evidence of identity that money can buy, But circumstantial evidenee ~ can't lle, Miss Blanche, if you gee enough of it. If the links Mt im te prove that a certain person was ig & certain pla t a certain time I guess that's worth all the oaths of all the eye-witnesses that ever saw bss ® light!” Canalet laughed harshly as for a 4pparent reason he led the way inte the garden, “Mr. Toye's madea. of these things,” he fired over Bis” shoulder, “He should have been ® Sherlock Holmes, and rather wishes he was one!" “Give me time,’ ing, ye - Cazalet faced him in a frame of tame gled greenery. “You told me you weren't!" : 1 ald, sir, but that was before they — put salt on this poor old crovk, If you're right, and he's not the shouldn't you say that rather altere@ the situation?” ‘q sald Toye, laugh- “I may come along that way can't have done it?” hardly paddiing in the glassy strip CHAPTER VI. Cazalet had trundie@ alongside the weir. Voluntary Service, ‘“ ND why do you think he 4 \ the old canoe over the rollers, and Blanchevwas Hig drops clustered on her idle blades, and made tiny circles as theyp met themselves tn tho shining mirror, Hut below the lock there had béem something to 0, and Blanche kad done it deftly a2¢ silemuy, with ale most equal capacity and grace. It had given her a charming flush and sparkle, and, what wit the sun's bare hand on her yellow hair, sho now looked even bonnler than 7 indoors, yet not quite, quite such @ girl, But then every bit of the had gone out of Cazalet. Se that) hour stolen from the past was Up © forever, (To Be Continued.) a This Book on the