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He arose and kicked the tin and it clattered against the stove; he kicked several of the bits of dough. He did not speak; there might have been an element of humor in a cracking oath or two. But his bodeful silence made the ludicrous mishap a rather grim affair. The kinglet flew away.

However, once more, making his fight with himself, Harris controlled his fury. He scruffed around on his knees and picked up the biscuits, one by one, blew on them vigorously, plucked off the bits of dirt and put the disks carefully back in the tin. He addressed the card on the wall, giving it the individuality of a mentor in order to express his thoughts aloud: "I have been down on my knees, as you might say, eating dirt in these woods for a week-I may as well eat more!"

He set the tin into the oven, shut the door, made sure of his fire, and went to the window which commanded a view of the forest in the rear of the log camp. The window was long and narrow and was set well up in the wall, its ledge making a comfortable rest for his folded arms as he stood and gazed out, pondering.

A few rods away, at the edge of the woods, in a mere nick of a clearing, there was a blueberry patch.

Hfeeding in the patch. The bear

ARRIS saw a small bear busily

was flat on its belly and it went hitching forward slowly, scooping in the low bushes with curved forelegs and nuzzling into the clumps of berries when the bushes had been gathered into a close mass.

Within reaching distance of Harris, laid in rests on the wall, was

a rifle. He grabbed it, aimed quickly and fired.

For a few moments Harris was sure that he had killed the animal; it lay mo、tionless.

He was sorry. It was more of that cursed precipitateness of his, he told himself. Quick on the trigger, as he had been too quick with his tongue! Was he never to be able to think twice before action? It was his prompt and bitter conviction that the poor, hungry bear had been happier than one Bernard Harris, and was entitled to be let alone in that happiness. But the bundle of fur was suddenly animated.

The bear stood up on its hind feet and swung its forelegs and cuffed vigorously at its head. Then on all fours it came galloping toward the camp, lumbering along sideways and offering a great show of haste, but in reality making slow progress; it was shaking itself vigorously.

Considering his own tempestuous temperament, Harris was pricked by contrition and by a whimsical spirit of apology; he had scared an apparently amiable bear into a condition of temporary paralysis that had continued until the bear had been stung back to life and activity by indignant wasps; he had disturbed the noon meal of a true native of the forest

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Harris was startled, but his regret for the attempt to kill the animal was with him, and he threw away the rifle. In a moment the bear sat down. The creature was near enough for Harris to note that its fur was plentifully sprinkled with bits of dead wood. The bear had been close to an old tree stub when Harris fired; he looked that way and saw that the bullet had shattered a portion of the rotten trunk; shuttling in the air around the tree were insects; Harris could behold them because the sunlight glistened on their wings. It was plain enough that the bullet had disturbed a wasps' nest and the bear had been held responsible.

Collier's, The National Weekly

morse, he had called himself a bear. Only a week before, at the climax of a dreadful affair, he had railed at himself and had declared that he would go into the woods and live with the wild animals.

Harris allowed the spirit of this new whimsy to take full possession of him. He leaned out of the window. Even at that moment the bear showed none of the usual timidity of wild animals.

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Harthorn was calling vociferously on somebody-anybody-to shoot the bear. But there were no volunteers just then

The tree claimed only a flash of Harris's attention; his gaze returned to the bear." The animal was sitting, staring straight at the man in the open window. Though the bear's mouth was wide open, the ursine countenance did not suggest ferocity. The expression was more like a sheepish grin than any display of anger. A black bear is a natural "comic," anyway! gait, its friskings, its clumsy waddlings, its wise face, and the upcocked scoops of ears always get a laugh at the zoo! So far as Harris could determine, there was nothing except amity on the bear's part, in this instance.

Its

who had a right to resent the intrusion of outlanders. Instead of rushing into the camp and proceeding to bite off the leg of the assailant, the bear was sitting there, apparently trying to convey as best he could by a broad grin that the thing was pretty much of a joke, after all.

For a moment Harris wondered if his loneliness had made him childish. He felt a sudden and warm impulse toward this bear. In the past, in his re

"Hello, Bill!" Harris called placatingly. It seemed quite natural to call the visitor Bill Bear; the name came out before Harris took thought.

The bear wagged his head. That movement joggled something that was suspended under the bear's chin; it was an object that flashed back the sun's rays; it was a metal tag. Then Harris saw that there was a collar on the bear's neck with a few links of chain hanging. He had been too much engrossed with his study of the bear's countenance, for obvious reasons, to note the other adjuncts till the animal's movements swung the tag.

"I'd like to assure you that I'm sorry, Bill," said Harris. "I'm not used to the woods. I took you for a wild bear. I apologize for interfering with your dinner."

The animal, its collar showing that it had associated with human beings, was won by the friendliness of Harris's tone and whined wistfully.

"Bill, come along in!" requested the host. "You're just in time for dinner."

He stepped back from the window, beckoning. The bear rose and came pad-padding toward the camp. Harris was moved by an impulse of caution; he picked up the stick on which he had tripped; he had heard that even a savage bear can be dismayed by a sharp tunk on the nose. But again whimsy controlled him; it was a questionable attitude for a host-brandishing a club in the face of an invited guest. The host put the stick into the stove. When he turned to confront the open door, the bear was on the porch, hesitating.

"Walk right in, Bill!"

ILL stood up on his hind legs and waddled into the camp. He came

BIL

slowly and deprecatingly, and his meek demeanor removed all of Harris's doubts. When the bear sidled up to him, paw extended, it was evident that the poor brute was showing off one of his tricks. Harris grabbed the paw and shook it vigorously. That confidence immediately put the guest at his ease; he had met a friend who understood. Therefore he went ahead after the fashion, so he had learned, which secured the favor of the masterful bipeds with whom he had associated in the past. He shuffled to and fro in a boxing posture and, when Harris met him halfway in the sport, proceeded to exchange playful cuffs with his new friend. Then Bill went to a chair, climbed up and sat down and panted, his jaws genially apart.

"I get you, Bill! But the biscuits have all of twenty minutes to go."

Harris pulled a chair in front of his guest and seated himself. The metal tag was dangling within reach. Harris inspected it. It bore the legend, rudely indented with a punch: "TAIM BARE.

DON'T SHUTE."

"I'm glad to meet one of your kind, Bill," said Harris earnestly. "I'm up here

in these woods trying to tame myself. I'm lonesome. I haven't had a soul to talk to! To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be able to talk sensibly to a human being, right now!"

Bill was regarding the speaker mildly and hopefully. Harris's fantastic mood of the moment discovered sympathy in the brown eyes. He was finding that speech was a relief; for days there had been a queer ache in his (Continued on page 20)

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Any industry lasts only so long as it serves mankind. Human nature loves an opportunity to select. The retail
trade offers a service of distribution and satisfaction

The Punching Bag of Business

S the American retailer the one great snag just now in the river of national prosperity?

I

Is it true that we would all be happier and richer if the retailer would only charge a fair price for the goods he sells you? And is it true that the retailer is refusing to buy new stocks from the manufacturers? Is he thereby keeping the wheels of industry at a standstill, causing unemployment, tying up credit, making us all poorer instead of richer?

Because these questions are important, at this time, not only to you but to every retailer and every manufacturer in America, let me endeavor to answer them out of twenty-eight years' experience in running a store for men.

First of all, I am not the leading retailer of America, nor even one of the leaders. I am merely the owner and manager of a good, average store in a good, average city. As such I can speak for thousands of other average stores throughout the country-the stores where you and your wife buy your clothes, your beefsteak, your groceries. When you went into Smith's store last year and priced a suit and found the price would have crippled your pocketbook for a month, you were justly annoyed. And you lodged your annoyance against the most obvious person. The retailer asked you too much, therefore the retailer was the profiteer. It was perfectly human to do this. And it was made easier by the charges lodged at that time by the Attorney General against all profiteers, and against all who charged high prices for anything, whether or not they satisfied their customers and kept them satisfied.

Now I do not believe for an instant that every retail merchant is all that he should be. The cold, hard figures of failures in retail business would alone show that he is not perfect. Furthermore, there are more bad retailers, as well as good retailers, than there are bad and good manufacturers. That alone allows more chances for imperfection.

Nothing is so valuable as facts. Facts are not a substitute for thought, but they are a basis upon which we can begin thinking. The wholesale price of a suit of clothes for which you pay $50 in our store

By I. H. Doutrich

Illustrated by Gordon Grant

Twelve years ago Mr. Doutrich bought a small and broken-down store in a city of 75,000 people. In this store, with 26 feet frontage on main street, he now does more than $1,250,000 worth of business in a year. He says he is not one of America's leading retailers. Manufacturers of the well-known brands of men's clothes which he sells disagree with him. They say that what he has learned about Good Will is of national value at this time. And the people of Harrisburg, by giving him an increasing vote of confidence, show that they agree with his remark: "Any industry or enterprise lasts only so long as it is of service to mankind. All that counts is satisfying the customers and keeping them satisfied"

is about $34. Out of the $16 difference between wholesale and retail price, the store that sells you the suit has to pay for the expenses of its own business. A survey of 200 stores shows this expense to be 27/2 per cent of the total business done. In our own store we have cut this to 221⁄2 per cent. Split the difference and you have 25 per cent, or $12.50, to cover this expense. That leaves $3.50 as the net profit

on the sale of the suit. He Now put yourself in the retailer's place. buys fifty of those $50 suits. In a perfect world his total receipts from the sale of those suits would be $2,500. This sounds like a good deal of

money. But he never receives this sum. It shrinks. First, there will be marked-down sales at the end of the season so that some of the suits will not have to be carried over to next season. No matter how expert his buyers, or his own judgment, some of the retailer's stock will not sell at the original price; and some customers after purchasing will exercise the human privilege of changing their minds and bringing the goods back. Again, prices the retailer pays the manufacturer will be cut behind him; and on the next lot of suits of the same grade that he buys he will pay only $30 instead of $34. Down will come the $50 suits in stock to $45, in order to keep step. All this is statistical-and it is the last bit of statistics that I am going to inflict upon you in an article that is personal, not a mere mass of figures. But you should remember that even the real, bona fide profiteer-the man who is frankly out for the money, and out for nothing but the money-finds that his $2,500 "profit" on such a transaction as we have considered shrinks down, in the course of a very little time, to something altogether unlike $2,500.

The quickest retort you can make is that, while wholesale prices have been dropping all along the line, retail prices have been holding up. Pick up your newspaper and scan the business page. Read the financial newspapers. You will see this retort. Banker, manufacturer, financial editor, business writer-all of them with one accord seem to hit out The reat the retailer without expecting a reply. tailer is at present something of a punching bag in the business world. His business, apparently, is to take punishment and keep his mouth shut. As a matter of fact-divorcing the matter once and for all from the realms of pure imagination-the ordinary small retailer is the last man, along the sales route which merchandise travels between the producer and consumer, to be reached by falling prices. The mouth of a river, farthest from the source, is last to be touched by the flowing water. More than most people think, the man who sells to you is still paying high prices to the man from whom he buys. The wool in the suit you buy to-day probably went

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into that suit when wool was at its peak. That particular wool is still carrying with it the highest price at which wool has sold in the last two years.

There have been, of course, reductions in the cost of labor, amounting in places to as much as 25 per cent. But if the yarn spinner cuts his pay roll 25 per cent, that alone won't have a very sharp effect on a suit which passes through a dozen or more pay rolls between the time it leaves the sheep and the time it reaches you. Herdsmen, shearers, freight handlers, sorters, dyers, spinners, packers, tailors, and salesmen all draw money from that wool as it passes. And if the herdsman, for instance, draws threequarters of a cent instead of a cent from the amount of wool that goes into your suit, that isn't going to figure very much in the price that you have to pay.

To a friend of mine, who also runs a store in Harrisburg, came a customer in a fine heat of indignation. "You are all out to make money-first, last, and all the time," said the customer.

"Then," answered the retailer, "why don't more of us make money?"

On the whole, the retail business is no gold mine. Can you remember a millionaire who made his money in it? There are, of course, men like the late Marshall Field, whose names are known to everyone-known because they are the startling exceptions that prove the rule. There are in America thousands upon thousands of small merchants, and very few of them are the Marshall Fields of tomorrow. Instead, there are more failures in retail trade than in any other form of industry.

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together like that. It will not be done so long as any one of us can break away, can slash his prices, and can capture all the trade of the others in his town.

In fact, I am not a bit interested in defending my business. I am only interested in explaining it, for it needs explanation and not defense. What can I do, what can any merchant do, to reduce expenses and to cut down that 271⁄2 per cent which represents the average cost of doing business and must be paid before any profits are taken out?

Are you a manufacturer? Help me look for a way to reduce expenses, and I and my brother merchants will be grateful, and will be able to order more goods from you. Are you a customer? Help me to reduce expenses, and I will offer you more and better merchandise, and at less cost. Suppose we begin our search for economy in the most obvious spot. Suppose we cut down the salaries of our people.

Well, I did this long ago. I didn't merely cut down salaries-I cut off the head of every man who wasn't a salesman in the right sense of that honorable word. No man who is merely an order taker, degenerating from that in an emergency into an undertaker, can afford to work in my store. I can't afford to keep men who are "afraid of the boss." You know them; the men who stiffen up when the boss comes near them, and heave a sigh of relief when he goes by. They are the kind of men who know in their hearts that the boss is a better man than they are; that he could jump down on the floor and satisfy a customer better than his men can satisfy him. I employ only men who can sell goods as well as I can or better than I can. I want each and every man to be able, in the old Western phrase, to look me square in the eye and tell me to go to h

Employing forty men, as we do, it is a pleasure to report that thirty-eight have been with us for more than a year. That is a pretty small labor turn

over in these days. But if any man resigns or dies, there will be a man ready to take his place. We don't advertise for clerks and salesmen-we select them from a list of men who want to work with us. Our salesmen receive what they earn, a square return on their ability to satisfy customers and to keep them satisfied. No customer has ever yet come to me and said: "Doutrich, you ought to cut down the wages you pay to the man who sold me this coat, or this collar."

If we lose our efficient men, or, what is still worse, transform them into sulky and inefficient men, our volume of business will shrink so fast and far that our price tags will have to be marked up, or else we will have to shut up shop and be Idone with it.

Let me say to you quite frankly that our men work hard. They have to. They are paid what they earn. They have to come in early. There is no clock to punch. Sales records are a better index of a man's ability than a time clock is; and if a man's sales fall off I don't need a clock to tell me that he has been soldiering on the job. They have to stay late, until the store closes. But I don't ask them to do more than a man should do, nor to carry their business worries home at night. Perhaps each of them realizes that I am there to do the worrying, and they are there to make the sales and to keep the customers satisfied.

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Barnum Was Wrong!

HAVE harped on this a little-"keep the customer

I satisfied." You have noticed it, haven't you?r

put it in, three or four times, so that you would notice it. Our stock in trade consists of well-known brands of men's clothes and accessories. To move this stock we have to keep our customers satisfied. That spells our individual and collective earning power. That spells the difference between a good average business and an average business. There are not people enough in Harrisburg to make it possible for us to dissatisfy any one of them. We cannot let a man leave our store in a rage against us, and console ourselves by thinking there will be another man along in a minute. There are not enough people in Harrisburg for that. No-and there are not enough people in Philadelphia or in Chicago or in New York. I wonder if the average retailer knows this, or whether he secretly believes with Barnum that there's another one born every minute.

Let's get forward with our ways and means to reduce expense. There is rent. Can we reduce this? If we try to reduce it by moving to a cheap and inconvenient location, we will do our customers a disservice and not a service. Light and heat are constant factors. Freight and express are not reducible by us. In fact, it is hardly possible to cut the overhead expenses of a retail store like ours without cutting the volume of business itself. And if we do this, up go the prices to compensate for the lessened volume.

The truth is, of course, that any industry or enterprise lasts only so long as it is of service to mankind. The service that the retail trade renders is one of distribution and satisfaction. Suppose that a law were passed which abolished all retail stores to-morrow. Would prices fall as a result? If each city had, instead of its many small stores, one large distributing depot, would you have a chance to get just what you like? Would you always believe the prices were fair-remembering that there would be no appeal from them, no chance to leave the depot and buy elsewhere. Human nature loves an opportunity to select. Nobody is forced to buy at this store-there are others in Harrisburg, and the customer can always compare our offerings and prices.

The satisfaction of customers is all that counts. I have built up my business upon it, with many an error and many an unfulfilled wish, but with a determination not to make the same mistake twice. And a year ago, when the howl against profiteering was at its height, I had a chance to test the collective satisfaction of the people who trade, or have ever traded, with us.

Our advertising manager, Mr. Consylman, brought a proof to my desk. The headlines ran as follows: IF YOU MAKE, OR HAVE MADE, A PURCHASE FROM THIS STORE, AND ARE NOT THOROUGHLY SATISFIED WITH THE PRICE YOU PAID, RETURN IT. GET YOUR MONEY BACK.

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OR two hundred years before Josiah Penlennon emigrated to the Scranton coal fields of

America the men of the Penlennon clan had mined coal in Carmarthen, Wales.

They Came to Ophir

The Penlennon males, according to Welsh tradition, "were born with coal dust in their eyes." To them the road of life led to the pit mouth. Their god was Anthracite.

There came a morning in Scranton when young Richard Penlennon refused to do homage to the god of his clan. His father, Josiah Penlennon, informed him that the cage was waiting, and Richard rebelled. Possibly all the little longings for fresh air and sunshine and green fields held by long-dead ancestors had been carried on till they found for themselves a citadel in the mind of Richard. Who knows? Many of us marry people with eyes and lips that a far-back forbear dreamed of. The longings of a thousand slaves might breed an emperor!

"I am not going to the mines," said young Richard. "I do not like the work."

"What?" gasped Josiah. "Thou art mad, boy! All Penlennons are miners!"

"I don't care," said Richard, glancing at the wise mother who listened to the argument. "I like the sunshine and the skies, the winds and-and blue water."

The mother knew as all mothers know the desires of their children. Something within her thrilled at his words, something that had waited for them. The horror of the dark mines was the great Fear that walked continually with the women bound to Penlennon men.

Josiah looked at Richard, and the father told himself that he too had always been afraid of the revolt. Richard was a strange boy. He was a black Celt who sat with dreams. He had learned rimes that to Josiah were foolish, and he liked the stars, the clouds, and the puppy winds of spring.

"If you don't want to be a Penlennon, don't be here when I come back from the mine," cried Josiah. "The Penlennon men are all miners or they are not Penlennons!"

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By James Francis Dwyer

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn

"Haggerty'll cure you," snarled the brokennosed sailor. "One voyage with him, and boys turn into farmers." But Richard Penlennon had the sea in his heart. He took punishment until at last Haggerty told him that he would have a ship of his own some day. A story of tragedy turned into high triumph, by a writer who has himself served on blue water around the world

was determined to meet the ocean at a spot that he had chosen years and years before. That spot was Savannah!

He couldn't tell why he had chosen Savannah as a trysting spot. He had always thought it a splendid name, and there was, of course, the mention of it in "Treasure Island," his favorite book, as the place where the ungodly buccaneer with the blue face had died, singing and shouting for drink. The picture of that blue-faced pirate screaming for grog and attempting by blasphemous rimes to drown the death rattles in his throat had always thrilled him.. Then there was a verse concerning a certain Marianna that was taught him by an engineer from the mines-not an exalting song, but who knows what mental meat the young require? The drunken freight train knew this song. It sang it as it rolled along:

This roving blade

He loved a jade

Whose name was Marianna;

He kissed her lips

On both his trips

For cotton to Savannah!

"For cotton to Savannah!" A wonderful line for schoolmasters! What scenes in American history it conjures up!

And Savannah was all that Richard Penlennon had dreamed it would be. A warm, colorful spot

where Mistress Romance in

a sarong of purple walked abroad and ogled boys with adventure in their hearts. There were darkies singing as they loaded cotton-bales and bales of cotton and there were blue waters and sailormen-sailormen who looked as if they had seen Circular Quay in Sydney, the Bund at Yokohama, the snowy mist cloth that covers Table Mountain, and all the places Richard longed to see!

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Sitting on the end of a wharf, the Celtic imagination, helped with the little longings of those dead Penlennons who had worshiped Anthracite, brought to Richard painted dreams. He saw the pearling luggers at Thursday Island, the Leuwin Light "a-blinkin' at lost seas," the choked Mersey, where the ships of the world nudge and push each other in search of berthing room. It was a wonderful world to Richard.

A voice broke in upon the dream parade, the voice of a lean, tall man:

"Want to go to sea, boy? Ship Gold o' Indus, bound for Rio, Captain Haggerty. I'm him."

Oh, dear Lord of Hosts who made the Great Waters, let us when we reach Thy Kingdom be young always! Let us as a gift from Thee thrill forever and ever as we thrilled when our individual Captain Haggerty asked us to ship aboard the Gold o' Indus, Rio-bound!

SHEE

HE slipped away that evening, slipped away into the soft November twilight, and Richard Penlennon's soul peeped out from every pore of his skin and exulted mightily. All the desires of those dead Penlennons who walked in darkness held high revelry within him. The Gold o' Indus was an unpainted, old sea sow that the ship knackers looked at with interest when she rolled by their graveyards, but to Richard Penlennon she was more wonderful than a golden barge.

She swung southward, filching with patched sails a wind that was bound for the haunts of Kidd and Morgan, of Red Howard and fivescore others who thumbed their noses to a slow-moving Justice till the lady got really angry and rounded them up. An evening of thrills for Richard. The musical tramping of bare feet, the snaky swish of ropes, the whining protests of blocks through whose innards the restless tackle writhed.

"Wot the 'ell did yer ship aboard this old soap box for?" asked a broken-nosed sailor.

"I had to," answered Richard. "You see, I—I dreamed I would! Dreamed it while I was waking." "Haggerty'll cure you o' that feeling," snarled

Broken Nose. "One trip with him an' boys become farmers."

A lot of those dead Penlennons must have longed to go to sea, because the desire in Richard was more than any hazing skipper could kill. Haggerty tried, but the boy puzzled him. He had strength and endurance and a capacity for taking punishThose dead Penlennons had endured much. Haggerty spoke to Richard Penlennon as the Gold o' Indus, looking more an ocean trull than ever, stumbled up the coast on the return trip to Savannah: "You'll have a ship of your own some day, boy." "Yes, sir," said Richard.

ment.

"You knew it?" asked Haggerty. "Yes, sir."

"That makes my prophecy better. I knew it the first trip I made. And I sailed with a devil."

Broken Nose heard the remark and nearly fell overboard with astonishment. "He thinks that you sailed with a saint!" he gasped after Captain Haggerty strode away. "Great sufferin' bobcats!"

APTAIN HAGGERTY'S prophecy came true.

the ship knackers; Captain Haggerty was killed by a shanghaied sailor off Cape Gracias a Dios; and Richard Penlennon, third mate now on a boat of the

Blue Castle Line, fell in love with a girl who lived in the sleepy old French Quarter of New Orleans.

A wonderful girl. Whenever Richard's boat came nosing up the muddy Mississippi he would growl at the careful pilot that brought her from the outer bar.

The pilot knew. "Yes, yes, Richard, boy," he would retort good-humoredly when Penlennon complained of his caution. "I could take chances if I minded. Ye can get away from a sand bar when the tide comes up, but ye can't get away from a girl."

Richard Penlennon, striding down Royal Street across the Vieux Carré, to the red-bricked house that had seen Old Hickory return in triumph after defeating the English, wondered what man would want to get away from Jessie Dufaux. He told himself that he was big and strong and stupid-he was six feet two now-while she was small and soft and mystical. "Too good for a sailor," he

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And then Penlennon saw her, the woman for whom he had searched the seven seas

would tell himself again and again. "What does a sailor deserve?"

Her blue eyes and red lips were whips that flogged his ambition. Second officer; first; then on a wonderful, wonderful day he was addressed as "Captain Penlennon" by the gray-haired head of the line. A wise person was the gray-haired man. He had gone out to China in the days when Yankee skippers churned the trails of the world into foam, and he knew men.

"Captain Penlennon," he said, eying the young giant with the dark Celtic face and the strange dream-filled eyes, "we have a new ship on the slips, and I'm thinking we'll put a new captain on her."

"Yes, sir," said Richard, and as he answered his thoughts slipped away for an instant to the Vieux Carré and left his face a little blank.

"What were you thinking of?" asked the grayhaired chief.

"Of a young lady in New Orleans," answered Richard Penlennon. "I thought if I had a ship I could ask her to be my wife. She is an orphan with no relatives."

Oh, my! Oh, my! Let us thank the little gods that there is still some sweet Chivalry and Romance in this world that is ruled by Business and cardindex systems.

The gray-haired one asked the young captain to name the new ship, and Richard Penlennon boldly called her the Jessie P.

"Now," said Gray Hair, "take a week off and marry the girl and take her on a trip to the Malay. I took my bride there five-and-forty years ago."

RICHAR

ICHARD PENLENNON told Jessie Dufaux the name of the new ship. It was his proposal of marriage. He held her close to him as he spoke, the first woman he had ever held in his arms, the only woman he ever would hold in his arms! "I was impudent," he said, "but I thought-I thought—" "No, Richard, you were certain," she murmured. "I would have given myself to you at any moment you asked."

On that glorious holiday he took her up to Scranton to see his little Welsh mother. Josiah was dead, but the little mother with the birdlike eyes hung on to life. She liked Jessie. She blessed her and Richard. They knelt together (Continued on page 27)

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