At Their Doors, Not Ours

Ta time when our problems, economic and

AT

social, are great enough, a flood of human beings is coming into the country. The country has discovered that its Americanization practices and its boasted melting pot are very largely fictions of the sentimentalists. Our melting pot has been pretty chilly and our digestion of the immigrants a very bad performance. It is pleasant to think of America as a harbor for the oppressed, but it is still more pleasant to think of America continuing to be a stable government and a nation of progressive ideals, to which the oppressed will continue to desire to come.

Speaking roundly, there are only a few proposals for restriction. Simplest of these is a proposal to restrict mere numbers, going sometimes as far as a stand in favor of restricting to the number zero. The second is a proposal to examine the newcomers so that out of those who desire to be immigrants to America we can pick the best. The literacy test is far from perfect. It would be better for us, for instance, to have an honest man and his wife who cannot read, but who have health, the ability to raise good children and the will to remain law-abiding, than to admit an educated scamp who may be attracted by our present crime statistics, and a female who gains a standing in society by writing brochures against society.

After all, the restrictions which should be placed either upon too much quantity or too

little quality are not more important than an effective method to make such restrictions work. From our point of view the only worthy way to restrict quantity is by the proportional method; that is, to admit from each country only a number of immigrants that will constitute a fixed percentage of the total number of immigrants who have formerly come from that country. The reasons for this are quite clear. They are based upon the ability of the different racial groups to be absorbed. This proportional system is not difficult of administration.

As to the proposal to exercise some selection in the admission of individuals, we are strongly of the belief that no such selection. can be made by any administrative machinery which may be set up at the various ports of influx. When two or three thousand immigrants are turning up at New York every day, it is absurd indeed to suppose that even a board consisting of the ten wisest men in the United States could do anything except make a laughable failure in passing upon the desirability of individuals.

The only other alternative is to select the immigrant, not at any point of reception, but at the place which he is leaving to come to America. Collier's would find no reason to oppose and every reason strongly to support a proposal to admit no immigrant who was not first examined by American representatives in the foreign country in which the proposed immigrant had his residence. It might be possible to put the responsibility of ex

amination upon an enlarged consular service, and in this case require a fairly stringent recommendation from local authorities who knew the man or woman proposing to make America his, or her, new home.

It is absurd to restrict immigration at our door when the immigrant has finished his pilgrimage. We ought to devise a means to test him before he sets out.

WH

From the Bridge

THEN you stand on the bridge between Cincinnati, in Ohio, and Covington, in Kentucky, you can see described, along the wharves below, man's limits up to the age of steel. Streets of three-story buildings fill the narrow, tilted bench along the river. Behind and above rises a mighty tower, an office building of the age of steel, crowning a cobbled steep of Civil War days.

The squat, drab warehouses and old pilots' hotels along the water front sufficed for their day; the towers on the hills behind suffice for this. The men of yesterday had soft bricks and iron, and thought their buildings were spacious and eminently comfortable; those of to-day have hard bricks and steel, and, true to nature, are content with the result. But is there any better reason now than ever for concluding that our objects of pride will not be surpassed? Men inclined to be doleful about the future should walk out on the bridge and, looking back, see, what man has done as his needs have multiplied.

Cavalier

or

Cave Man

By Heywood Broun

In American plays the successful hero is a muscular young man from the country, while

in France the heroine is more generally won by the fashionable Parisian of middle age and much experience. Our audiences like heroes who stammer bashfully when they make love, but France prefers the dashing gallant who is quick with a compliment. Heywood Broun tells how Count de Larzac fares with his love-making in "Transplanting Jean," the latest play that Broadway has transplanted from Paris

I

N an American play nobody has much chance to marry the heroine after he has passed thirty, and even that is considered a rather advanced age. The general run of heroes are twenty-five, or thereabout, and the average leading woman complains bitterly if she is asked to appear as anything much over nineteen. If one chances to be a middleaged character, he had best try to work his way into a play by a Frenchman. In the theatre of Paris everything is reversed. The great lover is never less than forty. Moreover, the man from home, the honest fellow who comes from the country in the traditional American play and puts all the city chaps to shame by carrying off the beautiful young girl, has been replaced by the boulevardier from Paris, who goes into the country and triumphs over the natives. American playwrights maintain that heroines are won by young men muscular and moral, but in the plays of France the hero has an I-have-lived air, and there is far more of finesse than force in his wooing. Instead of ingratiating himself with a young lady by twisting her wrist or choking her a little, the Parisian play hero compliments her on the good taste of her new dress. This could not be done by a hero in an American play. It would be considered effeminate.

Personally, I think this is a fortunate tradition for most of us. One dress does look so much like another that it is a godsend to be able to make a virtue out of the inability to tell the difference between the one that came at Christmas and little old last year's frock. Our theatrical tradition also i cludes the provision that worth-while men are not particularly articulate in making love. In practically every proposal scene the hero, in order that he may win the sympathy of the audience, is presented as a young man most bashful in his addresses. He can hardly stammer out what he wants to say. To be sure, audiences laugh at him, but they like him. Stupidity and reticence in the presence of the opposite sex are considered manly.

CUR

Like Father Like Son Is Wrong URIOUSLY enough, in the plays of France the man who makes love badly is not the one who wins the girl. That is just the way in which Jean lost Naima Duval in "Transplanting Jean," by De Caillavet and De Flers.

"Tell me things that are gentle-tender things [with a gesture]-oh, things!" began Naima provocatively to Jean, her fiancé.

"I love you truly," answered the honest Jean. "Yes, I know, but-say it in another manner," protested Naima.

Abbe

Jean stood pat. "There is only one way to say it," he insisted.

"I don't believe that," answered Naima. "If there were only one way, it could not have been told so often!"

Jean was twenty and handsome, but what possible chance could he have in the eyes of a French audience in comparison with the Count de Larzac, the greatest beau in Paris? Nobody had to hint to De Larzac for compliments. He was always ready, also, to remark that a dress was new, and he was even capable of advising whether or not the virtues of the gown could not be heightened with a twist of ribbon here or a splotch of color there. He was avowedly a ladies' man, which is not among the recognized professions for men, at least not for heroes, in the American theatre. Still, he was not so young. He was, in fact, forty. At the beginning of the play we find him on the point of reform. He confesses to a village priest that his decision to lead a better life dates from an afternoon on which he was making love to a young woman, and she suddenly began to laugh and pointed to his gray hair.

That evening he went alone to a café, and a fat woman sang: "We have all been twenty once." This increased his melancholy, and he decided to be done with follies, or, at least, to atone for them. First of all, he decided to make amends to his son Jean, who had been sent to the country as a small child shortly after the death of his mother, a beautiful French actress.

Accordingly, at the beginning of the play we find the Count de Larzac determined to acknowledge his son and to bring him to Paris, so that for the first time they may live together. He finds the boy a handsome and agreeable country youth of twenty, who shares almost none of his father's characteristics. There is an amusing scene, not without a touch of tenderness, in which the count seeks to establish in a few minutes the traditional relationship of father and son between himself and the young man whom he is meeting for the first time. Jean awkwardly knocks over a vase and breaks it, but his father is quick to comfort him with the assurance that he should have been about the house breaking things to his heart's content for at least twenty years.

However, for all this warm affection, Jean does not find himself much better off as the acknowledged son and heir of the Count de Larzac than he was before. Now, for the first time in his life, he experiences the check of parental authority. He wants to marry a young woman whom he met in the country. Her name is Naima Duval. The count answers that the match is not to be thought of, whereupon Jean leaves his father's house and goes back to the country. Before the count can complete his preparations to follow him, Naima Duval herself comes to call upon the father of her fiancé. De Larzac had declared his intention of being very severe with her, but, then, he did not know that she was such a pretty girl. Moreover, she has come to confess. She did not dare to tell Jean, (Continued on page 30)

above them the dim bulk of the butte reared itself in the night, dark and sinister. Some one raced past, running toward the foot of the butte trail. "Where was it?" yelled Morrison.

The runner did not stop. "Bob Hawley's shaft," he flung over his shoulder. "I saw the flash myself!"

"Billy Jane-Billy Jane!" shouted Uncle Jason hoarsely. "Stop her, Phil!" But Billy Jane had disappeared toward the butte trail, with Phil Morrison following closely. Old Jason started running also, but abandoned the plan after a few hobbling steps against the tearing wind.

"No," he said, "I'll be more useful gettin' lanterns and things together. And yes, I reckon I better go tell Aunt Sallie Hedrick to go up there and comfort little Billy Jane. Of course Phil Morrison will be up there with her, but, shucks, in times like this one the best man on earth is just a plain, helpless durn fool."

The old man turned back and hurried down the street toward the little hotel. The wind howled past, driving the hissing sand waves before his feet in the darkness.

He sat upon the ragged edge of what once was Bob Hawley's shaft. It no longer was a shaft; it was merely a pit, half filled with tumbled rocks. Ringing the pit, the men of Chuckawalla sat and looked somberly down. A faint, sinister odor came up through the crevices between the rocks; the odor of stale powder smoke. The storm had gone by and an unnatural glitter was in the air.

"Here's the way she happened," said Uncle Jason Applegate. "I passed here yesterday evening and stopped to see if Bob was ready to go home. He'd had drill trouble, and it looked as though he wouldn't get away for a couple hours, so I went on without him. But before I left I climbed down to chat a minute or two.

"On the way down I noticed that the top section of his ladder was pullin' her keys. I told Bob about it, and he said he was aimin' to fix her soon as he got time. He had his whole box of powder there too. He always carried it down with him when he went to set a round of shots. Packed it up and down the ladder in an old sack, hung round his neck with a strap. Fool thing to do. I cautioned him about the ladder and about the powder, and he said yes, he knew it was dangerous.

"Well, it happened just like I told Bob it was liable to happen. Bob set his shots last night, and when he'd got all four fuses to spittin' he swung his box of powder round his neck and went hurryin' up the ladder to get out of the way. When he got to that loose top section the ladder keys pulled out and pore old Bob went to the bottom with his sack of powder-and everything went up together! I can see it, just as plain as though I'd been here, lookin' on!"

The Chuckawalla men who had been gathered into the coroner's jury considered Uncle Jason's recital gravely, spitting absently into the ugly crater. The old prospector's graphic story settled the matter in the minds of all.

"Ain't any doubt you got it right, Jason," said Judge Barber. "Ain't any doubt at all!" And unanimously the men of Chuckawalla nodded agreement.

The coroner was but recently elected, and it seemed that he was not entirely clear regarding the exact scope of his duties. He looked about the circle of moody faces and scratched his head in some perplexity.

"I suppose you are right, gentlemen," he said. "Still, I-I-it seems to me that before returning your verdict you ought to be sure- Are you quite sure, gentlemen?"

Early next morning all of the Chuckawalla people were gathered in front of Hawley's cottage discussing the

remarkable event

came to his death in an accidental explosion. We furthermore bind ourselves to suspend all personal business and dig the shaft clear for Billy Jane."

There was not much said after that. But on the way home old Judge Barber epitomized Bob Hawley's character, talking to no one in particular as he trudged down the rocky trail.

"Bob was one man who was so honest he kept himself poor," said the judge. "I once heard him say he never willingly killed any creature, and that he'd rather be broke all his life than be worried by the thought that he'd maybe given some other poor fellow the worst of it."

"They's one comfortin' thought, though," said old Daddy Epperson, who was trailing along behind. "Bob died easy. He never knowed what hit him. That's a comfortin' thought."

Uncle Jason Applegate always took the opposite side in any argument in which Daddy Epperson was interested. For thirty years the two old friends had bickered together, and it had become a habit with them. Moreover, Uncle Jason was hot and tired and broken-hearted.

"To be blowed up and buried under fifty or seventy-five feet of rock," he said invidiously, "wouldn't comfort me much!"

ONE

NE evening Phil Morrison called to see Billy Jane Hawley at the hotel, where she had stopped with Aunt Sallie Hedrick ever since the tragedy. The young man had been talking to Billy Jane but a few minutes when there came a low knock at the door, and

he went to answer it.

"It's me!" said old Jason Applegate as Phil opened the door. His voice shook, and in the bright light of the

"I saw him!" panted the old man. "He's there yet! I was on my way up to take the night shift, and as I passed Bob Hawley's gate the hollyhocks rustled in the breeze-you know they're dead and dry, now that Billy Jane's awayI looked up between them two rows of dead hollyhocks, and there, sittin' on the steps, was pore old Bob Hawley! He was leanin' back against the railin' of the porch with his head back and the moon shinin' directly on his face! His eyes was closed--"

ever he comes face to face with the mysterious and unknown he feels the cold chill of that inherited Fear which has been handed down to all of us from those far days when our ancestors lived out their lives beneath the constant black wings of hovering superstition.

"Now, see here," said the young man, with rough tenderness, putting an arm about Jason's shoulders, "you come on home with me, Uncle Jason-"

"He was he was sittin' on the steps!" whispered old Jason as they approached the Hawley home. "He wasn't ten feet from me. I couldn't make any mistake."

"I saw him, I tell you!" said Jason. He was still panting as though from a long run. "The moon was on his white face and it was Bob Hawley! Oh, my . . ."

"Yes, you could. A man's eyes play queer tricks sometimes. And you've been under a long strain, Uncle Jason." Both men spoke in hushed whispers, and their flesh crawled as they neared the little gate before the silent cottage, standing gray and mysterious in the moonlight. There is something fearful in the atmosphere that surrounds a deserted house. The men reached the gate and glanced trembling up between the two rows of withered hollyhocks..

Old Jason uttered a scared, guttural screech through his constricted throat and fled down the street, his ancient feet flinging sand high in the air as he went. The young sheriff stood fast, though his own hair bristled and the cold chill breath of that atavistic Fear crept up and down his spine.

"Bob!" he called in a strange, strident voice. "Bob Hawley!"

The eyes opened in the dead-white face of the man sitting low on the cottage steps. "Is that you, Phil?" The voice was strained and unnatural, but it was the voice of Bob Hawley. "Come in, Phil! I been wantin' to see you! I want to tell you-"

Morrison tore the little gate open and dashed up the walk as Hawley's emaciated form slumped suddenly forward in a grotesque heap upon the ground.

next all

Chuckawalla people were gathered in the street in front of Hawley's cottage. Eagerly they discussed the remarkable event and speculated regarding it. The sun was slanting across the butte, and the desert was warming up. "Where's he been?" wondered Daddy Epperson. "Looks like we'd have seen him or at least some trace of him! He shorely has been layin' low! And what for?"

"There was a sand storm that night," said Judge Barber. "Remember? Of course that's why we didn't see his tracks leading away from the shaft next morning. But, as Epperson says, where has he been all this time?"

"Doc Girdley is in there," said Uncle Jason Applegate. "And Billy Jane. Phil Morrison too. They won't let anybody else in. I guess Bob's a pretty sick man. Say, what if we'd gone on down to the bottom of the shaft and found nothin' there, I reckon we'd have been worse surprised than we are this mornin'!"

Here Morrison came to the door of the cabin, and the crowd fell silent. The young man's eye ran over the assemblage and stopped with old Jason Applegate. "Oh, Jason!" he called.

Old Jason followed Phil into the cottage, walking clumsily upon the heavy tips of his hobnailed shoes. Here he found Bob Hawley lying in bed, his eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. One gnarled hand picked nervously at the bedclothes. Billy Jane sat upon the edge of the bed, holding the other hand. A tenseness was in the air. On a chair beside the bed Doc Girdley sat watching the sick man, his eyes puzzled, intent.

"Here's Jason, Bob," said Phil. Bob did not look at his old friend, but began immediately to talk. "I want to confess," he said in a low, level monotone. "I've killed a man."

Shaken to the heart, poor Jason broke down and sobbed hysterically. Still There was a paralyzed instant of siwith an arm about him, Morrison lence; then: "You're a liar!" burst out turned and started up the street toward old Jason crudely. "You wouldn't kill the Hawley home. But old Jason hung back. "No, Phil!" he quavered, terrified, "I-I can't! I'm an old man, Phil, and my nerves all shot to rags. I'm afraid, Phil. I don't dast go back there!"

a fly, Bob Hawley! It ain't in you-" But suddenly he caught the contagion that was in the air of the little room. He, too, felt the touch of the unknown dread. "Where is this here dead man But the young sheriff's arm was firm. of yours, ole-timer?" he asked with a "Come on!" he said again. "We weren't ghastly attempt at jocularity. afraid of Bob Hawley alive; let's face "In the bottom of the shaft," went him now like men?" He spoke bravely, on the low, lifeless voice. "The weasel. but his own teeth were chattering. No faced feller that tried to jump my claim. matter how brave a man may be, when- He came back, Jason-like he said he

would. I blowed the shaft walls down on him. He's there. In the bottom of the pit.

...

"After you left me that evenin', Jason, I got to thinkin' about that weasel-faced feller and about how he'd threatened to come back and get me. It was lonesome and still, away down in the shaft by myself. And I got to goin' over what you'd said about the box of powder and them loose ladder keys. Made me nervous, I reckon. Anyway, when I got my shots down and tamped all regular, I actually started to light the fuses before I ever thought about my box of powder, settin' there with the lid off, and a box of caps layin' open on top of it! I stuck the candle back into the hangin' wall, and just then I heard somebody climbin' down I supposed it was you, the ladder. Jason, comin' back after somepin'; never even suspected it was anybody else till the man dropped from the last rung of the ladder and turned so I saw his face.

"It was my claim jumper, Jasonsame feller we'd been talkin' about! I remember the candlelight made queer shadows at the base of his long, thin nose, and his little wicked black eyes watched me out of the shadows.

"Hello!" he says, and grinned. Like a weasel. Liftin' the edges of his lip and showin' his side teeth, you know. 'I've come back!'

"'Yes,' I says, and stood watchin' him. "I said I'd come back,' he says, and took out his pipe. 'I said I'd come back -and here I am!'

"There you are, sure enough!' I told him. 'But you better get out o' herefor I'm goin' to shoot these holes and go home!'

"No shootin' allowed on this property!' he says, showin' the sharp teeth along the edges of his lifted upper lip. Just like a weasel. This place belongs to me. I've come back for it. If there's any shootin' done, I'll do it!'

"I smelled whisky.. And, rememberin' that, I've come to the conclusion the feller was drunk or he wouldn't have done what he did.

"I had my box of dynamite slung round my neck by this time. My back was turned, and suddenly I smelled powder. The next instant I heard the spittin' of burnin' fuse. I whirled and saw the weasel-faced feller with the candle in his hand and all four fuses goin'. I jumped for the nearest one, intendin' to pinch out the fire, but I was too late. It had already gone into the ground. I pulled, but the end broke off and the fire stayed below.

"No, I don't know whether the man was drunk or crazy; but whichever it was he seemed all at once to come out of it and to realize what he'd done. He broke for the ladder same time I did. We was both crazy right then, I reckon. We both knew that most likely only one of us would get out alive. We fought over the ladder. Like dogs over a bone. The strap broke, and my bag of powder fell to the floor of the shaft. The weasel-faced man got my throat in his hands... I had my single jack in my hand. I don't know how I happened to have it. I hit him. He fell across the box of powder. The candle had gone out-knocked down in the scuffle, I reckon. It was dark down there. Black dark, with the smell of powder and the wicked little sparks snapping

at me.

"I got to the top all right; but as I started to run hell came roarin' up

out of the ground, and my light_went out. When I came to myself I was layin' among the rocks, twenty feet away from what had been my shaft. I felt myself over to see if there was any broken bones. My hair and eyelashes was singed, but otherwise I seemed all right. So I left. "Things are kind of mixed from there on. Seems to me I laid out in the brush for two-three days, but I'm not sure. Then I came home. I found the house plumb deserted, so I rambled in and went to bed. Sometimes I won

Nobody ever came near the house, so I was safe.

"But I couldn't stand it. I had to tell somebody. Somepin' inside of me kept hammerin' and hammerin', steady as a single jack hammerin' a drill. And what it hammered was this:

"You're a murderer! You killed a man! It was your life or his—but you

killed him!'

"By and by I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to tell it to somebody. I started downtown; but on the steps I got sort of dizzy, so I sat down to wait till I got over it. After a while I heard somebody.

"You're sheriff, Phil! That's my confession! And God help pore Billy Jane!"

OC GIRDLEY and old Jason Apple

Dgate left the house together. On

the porch they halted a moment. Doc's face still wore its perplexed, worried look. "Jason," he said, "was that right-about the weasel-faced fellow, you know?"

"Shorely," said Jason promptly. "Bob and me was talkin' about him just before I went up the ladder on my way home. The sneakin' devil must have been. hangin' round. while I was down there; and when he saw me leave, why, he slipped down to scare poor Bob to death. He was drunk, of course. What'll they do to Bob, Doc?"

"Nothing," said Doc Girdley. "Remember desert men hate a claim jumper."

"And they won't return no verdict on Bob?"

"Dempsey Is Here"

"to make a movie, as you know," writes H. C. Witwer from Los Angeles. We didn't know it, but we might have guessed. It's what all heavyweight champions do between bouts. That on the authority of Witwer himself in Round 10 of The Leather Pushers, which came with his letter and which you will read in next week's Collier's.

In Round 10 Kid Roberts, greatest of heavyweights, has a most startling adventure as a movie hero and shows, among other things, that some of the screen fights you see may be the real thing.

"Nothing but three cheers. But this thing's going to break Bob's heart and kill him. He'll never be able to get his mind off the fact that he killed a man." They joined the crowd that thronged the street in front of the cottage. Doc Girdley went on home and Jason stayed behind to spread the news of Bob Hawley's remarkable confession.

"Bob takes it mighty hard," he said after he had told everything. "Bob takes it mighty hard."

"I'm glad we're goin' to see the bottom of the shaft in a few days," said Judge Barber. He was whittling the gatepost. "I'm anxious to see what a man looks like after going through the experience that the weasel-faced man went through! It ought to cheer Bob a heap too when he hears that his shaft is all fixed up again, ready to go ahead."

"I don't know," said Jason doubtfully. "Doc Girdley says this thing is goin' to kill Bob."

Judge Barber closed his knife and returned it to his pocket. The act was one of finality. "All the more reason why we ought to hurry and get the. shaft cleaned out for Billy Jane," he said. "Come on, boys!"

"And won't ole Weasel-Face blush

when we uncover him!" said Daddy Epperson grimly. "Considerin' that he was mixed up with twenty pounds of frisky dynamite and several hundred tons of country rock, I bet you that what's left will look like the small end of nothin' in particular!"

FOLL

OLLOWING his confession, Hawley became delirious. All through the days of his delirium the man repeated again and again the story which

dered where Billy Jane was, but mostly he had told to the group about the bed. I slept. My head hurt me.' I been lay- The narrative was disjointed at times, in' low here ever since. I never built frequently incoherent-but always con

a fire in the daytime, and I never showed a light at night. Just laid low.

vincing.

On the morning of the sixth day fol

ever.

Hawley greeted his daughter with a smile of intelligence, though he was very weak. Billy Jane took one thin, calloused hand, fighting with the tears. "Been asleep all night, ain't I, Billy Jane?" Bob grinned. "I reckon the shaft's all knocked to pieces?" and his face turned anxious.

"It's shot up some, daddy," soothed Billy Jane. "But don't you worry; the boys are cleaning it out. When you get up you'll find your shaft as good as new."

"Where's Jason?"

"He's up there, helping. They're running a night shift, you know. He'll be along after a while."

"I want to see Jason. He told me that powder bag would blow me up some day. Said I'd get blowed so high people'd have to camp out for a day or two, waitin' for me to come down! Well, I got blowed up all right, but the coroner ain't goin' to get a job! Not this trip! I want to tell Jason that. And the ladder keys didn't pull either!"

"You go to sleep again, Bob!" said Doc Girdley. "No more talking."

99

"All right, Doc. But first I got to tell Billy Jane how it happened, so she can tell Jason if I'm asleep when Jason comes along.

"Jason's talk about the loose ladder keys started it. I'd been thinkin' so much about 'em durin' the two hours after Jason went away that I must have been nervous. Don't see how anything else would have made me act the way I did. After I got the holes made and my shots down and tamped all regular, why, I actually lit the fuses before ever I remembered my box of powder!

"Yes, sir, there she set-with the lid off and the box of caps open on top and the sparks from the fuses flyin' among 'em! Any one of them sparks, if it hit

a cap, would set off the whole works! I see it wasn't any manner of use tryin' to pull all the fuses, for I had cut

'em short. You know I always did economize on fuse. So I grabbed my powder and stuffed it into the bag, swung the bag round my neck, and went up that ladder with all four fuses spittin' like tomcats below me. When I got to the hole in the windlass platform the powder bag caught on a splinter. I knew the shots was due to go off any second, so I didn't wait to untangle it. I heaved through. That broke the strap and the box of powder went back down the shaft. I started to run--and that's as far as I remember anything. Next thing I did remember I was layin' here, with Doc Girdley leanin' over me like he was gettin' ready to take a bite out of my ear!"

HERE followed a short silence. Doc Girdley's eyes went across the bed and met Billy Jane's eyes. They read there the same question.

more.

"Doc," said Hawley drowsily, "that suggestion of yours was a heap hokum! I reckon I will sleep a little His eyes closed. Doc Girdley tiptoed from the room and beckoned Billy Jane to follow. Out in the kitchen Aunt Sallie Hedrick still slept in her chair.

"What do you make of it, Billy Jane?" asked Doc. The girl shook her head, bewildered.

"I got a suspicion," said Doc, "but it's such a wild, utterly ridiculous suspicion-"

"How

They sat down and, as before, silence came over the little room. Doc Girdley's brow was wrinkled and puzzled still. A step sounded on the porch, and old Jason Applegate came in. He too wore a dazed, bewildered look. is he?" was his first question. "He's been awake," said Doc. "He'll get well now. Listen, Jason. He told the same story he told us before-but he never mentioned the weasel-faced man! Not a single mention, Jason!" Old Jason passed a trembling hand "And we across his grimy forehead. got to the bottom to-night," he quavered. "And we didn't find no weasel-faced man either! Not even a single jaw tooth! There was nothin' in the bottom

of that pit! Not even a suspender button!"

The doctor got up and went over to Billy Jane. The puzzled look was gone and his voice choked as he spoke to the girl.

"Billy Jane," he said, "you can go to sleep now. Your dad's going to get well. More than that, he never killed any weasel-faced man. I had the hunch all along, but it was so darned improbable I didn't dare even hint at it. There never was any weasel-faced man in the shaft with Bob! That was just hallucination; part of the delirium that followed! But he fooled us all! He told it so smoothly and it sounded so rational When Bob Hawley gets well I'm going to punch him in the eye!" The good-hearted doctor choked and started to go. "Fooling his doctor that way!" he grumbled gruffly. "1 ought to chloroform him!"

JUS

UST before daylight Phil Morrison came in. He was tired nearly to death, but he was happy. He did not even stop to ask how Bob was, but took Billy Jane in his arms and kissed her. "That's for good news!" he said. "I got my post-office robber, all right, and who d'you suppose he was? The claim jumper! Billy Jane, it's the truth! Your dad must have dreamed that yarn he told us! Yes, sir, old Weasel-Face is down in the calaboose right now with half a dozen oldtimers begging for the privilege of crawling through the bars and harvesting both his ears Billy Jane! Billy Jane. .