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was; and her belief in his general strength helped her not to see at this moment that he was deriving his sense of the square thing from her. She could not know, and probably could not have imagined, how little his own sense of the square thing had to do with any system of morality, and how entirely he must always define morality as what pleased Kate. Other women liked confections; she preferred morality, and he meant she should have it, if he had to turn pirate to get it for her.

"You did n't think I was n't paying for the show?" he pursued bravely; but in his heart he was saying, "She loathes it. She hates it. Why did n't I think? Why did n't I think?" He added aloud: "I had my fun, and now I've got you. You 're both cheap at the price, and I'm going to step up and pay it like a little man. You must know that."

His smile met no answering smile. He mopped his forehead, and stared anxiously at her. All the easiness in the world could n't make him sure what she would say next. She said nothing, and he had to go on desperately, with a cold fear gathering about his heart. "Why, it's just like me, is n't it, Kate, to work a scheme on the old Rajah? It's like a man who owns a mine that 's turning out $2000 a month, to rig a game out in this desert country to do a confiding Indian prince out of a few thousand rupees?" He advanced this recently inspired conception of his conduct with an air of immemorial familiarity, born of desperation. "What mine?" she asked with dry lips. "The Lingering Lode,' of course. You've heard me speak of it?"

"Yes; but I did n't know—"

hand on his lightly, in mute petition for having even seemed to doubt him, "I know you, Nick. You like to make the better seem the worse reason; you like to pretend to be wicked. But who is so honest? O Nick! I knew you had to be true. If you were n't, everything else would be wrong."

He took her in his arms. "Would it, little girl?" he asked, looking down at her. "We must keep the other things right, then, at any expense."

He heaved a deep sigh as he stooped and kissed her.

"Have you such a thing as a box?" he asked, after a long pause.

"Any sort of box?" asked Kate, bewilderedly.

"No-well, it ought to be the finest box in the world, but I suppose one of those big grapeboxes will do. It is n't every day that one sends presents to a queen."

Kate handed him a large chip box in which long green grapes from Kabul had been packed. Discolored cotton-wool lay at the bottom.

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That was sold at the door the other day," she said. "Is it big enough?"

Tarvin turned away without answering, emptied something that clicked like a shower of pebbles upon the wool, and sighed deeply. Topaz was in that box. The voice of the Maharaj Kunwar lifted itself from the next room.

"Tarvin Sahib- Kate, we have eaten all the fruit, and now we want to do something else."

"One moment, little man," said Tarvin. With his back still toward Kate, he drew his hand caressingly, for the last time, over the

"That it was doing that? Well, it is—right blazing heap at the bottom of the box, fondalong. Want to see the assay?"

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“A rich man? Moderately, while the lead holds out. Too rich for petty larceny, I guess." He was joking for his life. The heart-sickening seriousness of his unseriousness was making a hole in his head; the tension was too much for him. In the mad fear of that moment his perceptions doubled their fineness. Something went through him as he said "larceny." Then his heart stopped. A sure, awful, luminous perception leaped upon him, and he knew himself for lost.

If she hated this, what would she say to the other? Innocent, successful, triumphant, even gay, it seemed to him; but what to her? He turned sick.

Kate or the Naulahka. He must choose. The Naulahka or Kate?

"Don't make light of it," she was saying. "You would be just as honest if you could n't afford it, Nick. Ah," she went on, laying her

ling the stones one by one. The great green emerald pierced him, he thought, with a reproachful gaze. A mist crept into his eyes: the diamond was too bright. He shut the lid down upon the box hastily, and put it into Kate's hands with a decisive gesture; he made her hold it while he tied it in silence. Then, in a voice not his, he asked her to take the box to Sitabhai with his compliments. "No," he continued, seeing the alarm in her eyes; "she won't, she dare n't, hurt you now. Her child's coming along with us; and I'll go with you, of course, as far as I can. Glory be! it's the last journey that you 'll ever undertake in this infernal land. The last but one, that 's to say. We live at high pressure in Rhatore-too high pressure for me. Be quick, if you love me."

Kate hastened to put on her helmet, while Tarvin amused the two princes by allowing them to inspect his revolver, and promising at some more fitting season to shoot as many coins as they should demand. The lounging escort at the door was suddenly scattered by a trooper

from without, who flung his horse desperately consciously he clasped Umr Singh so closely through their ranks, shouting, "A letter for to his breast that the child cried out. Tarvin Sahib!"

Tarvin stepped into the veranda, took a crumpled half-sheet of paper from the outstretched hand, and read these words, traced painfully and laboriously in an unformed round hand:

DEAR MR. TARVIN: Give me the boy, and keep the other thing. Your affectionate FRIEND.

Tarvin chuckled, and thrust the note into his waistcoat pocket. "There is no answer," he said; and to himself: "You 're a thoughtful girl, Sitabhai; but I 'm afraid you 're just a little too thoughtful. That boy's wanted for the next half-hour. Are you ready, Kate?"

The princes lamented loudly when they were told that Tarvin was riding over to the palace at once, and that, if they hoped for further entertainment, they must both go with him. "We will go into the great Durbar Hall," said the Maharaj Kunwar, consolingly, to his companion at last, " and make all the musicboxes play together."

"I want to see that man shoot," said Umr Singh. "I want to see him shoot something dead. I do not wish to go to the palace."

"You'll ride on my horse," said Tarvin, when the answer had been interpreted, "and I'll make him gallop all the way. Say, Prince, how fast do you think your carriage can go?" "As fast as Miss Kate dares."

Kate stepped in, and the cavalcade galloped to the palace, Tarvin riding always a little in front, with Umr Singh clapping his hands on the saddle-bow.

"We must pull up at Sitabhai's wing, dear," Tarvin said. "You won't be afraid to walk in under the arch with me?"

"I trust you, Nick," she answered simply, getting out of the carriage.

"Then go into the woman's wing, give the box into Sitabhai's hands, and tell her that I sent it back. You'll find she knows my name."

The horse trampled under the archway, Kate at its side, and Tarvin holding Umr Singh very much in evidence. The courtyard was empty, but as they came out into the sunshine by the central fountain the rustle and whisper behind the shutters rose, as the tiger-grass rustles when the wind blows through it.

"One minute, dear," said Tarvin, halting, "if you can bear this sun on your head."

A door opened, and a eunuch came out, beckoning silently to Kate. She followed him and disappeared, the door closing behind her. Tarvin's heart rose into his mouth, and un

The whisper rose, and it seemed to Tarvin as if some one were sobbing behind the shutters. Then followed a peal of low, soft laughter, and the muscles at the corner of Tarvin's mouth relaxed. Umr Singh began to struggle in his arms.

"Not yet, young man. You must wait until -ah! thank God!"

Kate reappeared, her little figure framed against the darkness of the doorway. Behind her came the eunuch, crawling fearfully to Tarvin's side. Tarvin smiled affably, and dropped the amazed young Prince into his arms. Umr Singh was borne away kicking, and before they left the courtyard Tarvin heard the dry roar of an angry child, followed by an unmistakable yelp of pain. Tarvin smiled.

"They spank young princes in Rajputana. That's one step on the path to progress. What did she say, Kate?"

"She said I was to be sure and tell you that she knew you were not afraid. "Telĺ Tarvin Sahib that I knew he was not afraid."

"Where 's Umr Singh?" asked the Maharaj Kunwar from the barouche.

"He's gone to his mother. I'm afraid I can't amuse you just now, little man. I've forty thousand things to do, and no time to do them in. Tell me where your father is."

"I do not know. There has been trouble and crying in the palace. The women are always crying, and that makes my father angry. I shall stay at Mr. Estes's, and play with Kate."

"Yes; let him stay," said Kate, quickly. "Nick, do you think I ought to leave him?

"That 's another of the things I must fix," said Tarvin. "But first I must find the Maharajah, if I have to dig up Rhatore for him. What's that, little one?"

A trooper whispered to the young Prince. "This man says that he is there," said the Maharaj Kunwar. "He has been there since two days. I also have wished to see him."

"Very good. Drive home, Kate. I'll wait here."

He reëntered the archway, and reined up. Again the whisper behind the shutter rose, and a man from a doorway demanded his business.

"I must see the Maharajah," said Tarvin. "Wait," said the man. And Tarvin waited for five minutes, using his time for concentrated thought.

Then the Maharajah emerged, and amiability sat on every hair of his newly oiled mustaches.

For some mysterious reason Sitabhai had withdrawn the light of her countenance from him for two days, and had sat raging in her own apartments. Now the mood had passed,

and the gipsy would see him again. Therefore the Maharajah's heart was glad within him; and wisely, as befitted the husband of many wives, he did not inquire too closely into the reasons that had led to the change.

“Ah, Tarvin Sahib," said he, "I have not seen you for long. What is the news from the dam? Is there anything to see ?"

"Maharajah Sahib, that 's what I've come to talk about. There is nothing to see, and I think that there is no gold to be got at."

"That is bad," said the King, lightly. "But there is a good deal to be seen, if you care to come along. I don't want to waste your money any more, now I 'm sure of the fact; but I don't see the use of saving all the powder on the dam. There must be five hundred pounds of it."

"I do not understand," said the Maharajah, whose mind was occupied with other things. "Do you want to see the biggest explosion that you 've ever seen in your life? Do you want to hear the earth shake, and see the rocks fly?"

The Maharajah's face brightened. "Will it be seen from the palace ?" he said; "from the top of the palace?"

"Oh, yes; but the best place to watch it will be from the side of the river. I shall put the river back at five o'clock. It's three o'clock now. Will you be there, Maharajah Sahib ?" "I will be there. It will be a big tamasha. Five hundred pounds of powder! The earth will be rent in two."

"I should remark. And after that, Maharajah Sahib, I am going to be married; and then I am going away. Will you come to the wedding?"

The Maharajah shaded his eyes from the sun-glare, and peered up at Tarvin under his turban.

"By —, Tarvin Sahib," said he," you are a quick man. So you will marry the doctorlady, and then you will go away? I will come to the wedding. I and Pertab Singh."

THE next two hours in the life of Nicholas Tarvin will never be adequately chronicled. There was a fierce need upon him to move mountains and to shift the poles of the earth; there was a strong horse beneath him, and in his heart the knowledge that he had lost the Naulahka and gained Kate. When he appeared, a meteor amid the coolies on the dam, they understood, and a word was spoken that great things were toward. The gang foreman turned to his shouts, and learned that the order of the day was destruction- the one thing that the Oriental fully comprehends.

They dismantled the powder-shed with outcries and fierce yells, hauled the bullock-carts

from the crown of the dam and dropped the derrick after them, and tore down the mat and grass coolie-lines. Then, Tarvin urging them always, they buried the powder-casks in the crown of the half-built dam, piled the wrapped charges upon them, and shoveled fresh sand atop of all.

It was a hasty onslaught, but the powder was at least all in one place; and it should be none of Tarvin's fault if the noise and smoke at least did not delight the Maharajah.

A little before five he came with his escort, and Tarvin, touching fire to a lengthened fuse, bade all men run back. The fire ate slowly into the crown of the dam. Then with a dull roar the dam opened out its heart in a sheet of white flame, and the masses of flying earth darkened the smoke above.

The ruin closed on itself for an instant before the waters of the Amet plunged forward into the gap, made a boiling rapid, and then spread themselves lazily along their accustomed levels.

The rain of things descending pitted the earth of the banks and threw the water in sheets and spurts. Then only the smoke and the blackened flanks of the dam, crumbling each minute as the river sucked them down, remained to tell of the work that had been.

"And now, Maharajah Sahib, what do I owe you?" said Tarvin, after he had satisfied himself that none of the more reckless coolies had been killed.

"That was very fine," said the Maharajah. "I never saw that before. It is a pity that it cannot come again."

"What do I owe you?" repeated Tarvin. "For that? Oh, they were my people. They ate a little grain, and many were from my jails. The powder was from the arsenal. What is the use to talk of paying? Am I a bunnia that I can tell what there is to pay? It was a fine tamasha. By —, there is no dam left at all!" "You might let me put it right.”

"Tarvin Sahib, if you waited one year, or perhaps two years, you would get a bill; and besides, if anything was paid, the men who pay the convicts would take it all, and I should not be richer. They were my people, and the grain was cheap, and they have seen the tamasha. Enough. It is not good to talk of payment. Let us return to the city. By, Tarvin Sahib, you are a quick man. Now there will be no one to play pachisi with me or to make me laugh. And the Maharaj Kunwar will be sorry also. But it is good that a man should marry. Yes; it is good. Why do you go, Tarvin Sahib ? Is it an order of the Government?"

"Yes; the American government. I am wanted there to help govern my State." "No telegram has come for you," said the King, simply. "But you are so quick."

Tarvin laughed lightly, wheeled his horse, and was gone, leaving the King interested but unmoved. He had finally learned to accept Tarvin and his ways as a natural phenomenon beyond control. As he drew rein instinctively opposite the missionary's door and looked for an instant at the city, the sense of the otherness of things seen daily that heralds swift coming change smote the mind of the American, and he shivered. "It was a bad dream, a very bad dream," he muttered; "and the worst of it is that not one of the boys in Topaz would ever believe half of it." Then the eyes that swept the arid landscape twinkled with many reminiscences. "Tarvin, my boy, you've played with a kingdom, and for results it lays over monkeying with the buzz-saw. You were left when you sized this state up for a played-out hole in the ground-badly left. If you have been romping around six months after something you had n't the sabe to hold when you 'd got, you 've learned that much. Topaz! Poor old Topaz!" Again his eyes ran round the tawny horizon, and he laughed aloud. The little town under the shadow of Big Chief, ten thousand miles away and all ignorant of the mighty machinery that had moved in its behalf, would have resented that laugh; for Tarvin, fresh from events that had shaken Rhatore to its heart, was almost patronizing the child of his ambition.

He brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack, and turned his horse toward the telegraph-office. "How in the name of all that's good and holy," said he, "am I to clear up this business with the Mutrie? Even a copy of the Naulahka in glass would make her mouth water." The horse cantered on steadily, and Tarvin dismissed the matter with a generous sweep of his free hand. "If I can stand it she can. But I'll prepare her by electricity."

The dove-colored telegraph-operator and postmaster-general of the state remembers even to-day how the Englishman who was not an Englishman, and, therefore, doubly incomprehensible, climbed for the last time up the narrow stairs, sat down in the broken chair, and demanded absolute silence; how, at the end of fifteen minutes' portentous meditation and fingering of a thin mustache, he sighed heavily as is the custom of Englishmen when they have eaten that which disagrees with them, waved the operator aside, called up the next office, and clicked off a message with a haughty and high-stepping action of the hands; how he lingered long and lovingly over the last click, applied his ear to the instrument as though it could answer, and, turning with a large sweet smile, said: "Finis, Babu. Make a note of that," and swept forth chanting the war-cry

of his State:

It is not wealth nor rank nor state,
But git-up-and-git that makes men great.

THE bullock-cart creaked down the road to Rawut Junction in the first flush of a purple evening, and the low ranges of the Aravullis showed as many-colored cloud-banks against the turquoise sky-line. Behind it the red rock. of Rhatore burned angrily on the yellow floors of the desert speckled with the shadows of the browsing camels. Overhead the crane and the wild duck were flocking back to their beds in the reeds, and gray monkeys, family by family, sat by the roadside, their arms round one another's necks. The evening star rose up from behind a jagged peak of rock and brushwood, so that its reflection might swim undisturbed at the bottom of an almost dried reservoir, buttressed with time-yellowed marble and flanked by silver plume-grass. Between the star and the earth wheeled huge fox-headed bats and nightjars hawking for the feather-winged moths. The buffaloes had left their water-holes, and the cattle were lying down for the night. Then villagers in far-away huts began to sing, and the hillsides were studded with home lights. The bullocks grunted as the driver twisted their tails, and the high grass by the roadside brushed with the wash of a wave of the open beach against the slow-turning tires.

The first breath of a cold-weather night made Kate wrap her rugs about her more closely. Tarvin was sitting at the back of the cart swinging his legs and staring at Rhatore before the bends of the road should hide it. The realization of defeat, remorse, and the torture of an over well-trained conscience were yet to come to Kate. In that hour, luxuriously disposed upon many cushions, she realized nothing more than a woman's complete contentment with the fact that there was a man in the world to do things for her, though she had not yet learned to lose her interest in how they were done. The reiterated and passionate farewells of the women in the palace, and the cyclonic sweep of a wedding at which Nick had refused to efface himself as a bridegroom should, but had flung all their world forward on the torrent of his own vitality, had worn her out. The yearning of homesickness - she had seen it in Mrs. Estes's wet eyes at the missionary's house an hour before—lay strong upon her, and she would fain have remembered her plunge into the world's evil as a dream of the night, but —

"Nick," she said softly.

"What is it, little woman?"

"Oh, nothing; I was thinking. Nick, what did you do about the Maharaj Kunwar?" "He's fixed, or I'm mistaken. Don't worry

your head about that. After I'd explained a thing or two to old man Nolan he seemed to think well of inviting that young man to board with him until he starts for the Mayo College. Tumble?"

"His poor mother! If only I could have-" "But you could n't, little woman. Hi! Look quick, Kate! There she goes! The last of Rhatore."

A string of colored lights high up on the hanging-gardens of the palace was being blotted out behind the velvet blackness of a hillshoulder. Tarvin leaped to his feet, caught the

side of the cart, and bowed profoundly after the Oriental manner.

The lights disappeared one by one, even as the glories of a necklace had slid into a Kabul grape-box, till there remained only the flare from a window on a topmost bastion-a point of light as red and as remote as the blaze of the Black Diamond. That passed too, and the soft darkness rose out of the earth fold upon fold, wrapping the man and the woman.

"After all," said Tarvin, addressing the newlighted firmament, "that was distinctly a side issue."

THE END.

THE GREAT AMERICAN SAFETY-VALVE.

HE Republic is opportunity. It is the birthright of every American boy to have the chance to be President, and of every American girl to have the chance to be the President's wife. The atmosphere is stimulating to ambition. The desire inspired by the genius of American institutions is "to be equal to our superiors and superior to our equals." But in the midst of universal suggestions prompting the citizen to high ambitions, the ugly fact remains that the positions of political distinction are relatively very few compared to the vast multitude of possible aspirants. The practical politician confesses this in the wail, "There ain't offices enough to go round among the boys."

The intelligent foreigner is much perplexed by this problem. He can understand why the undistinguished classes on the Continent submit contentedly to obscure conditions of life. It is the lot to which they are born. But here every school-boy is taught that the highest stations are open to him; and in a thousand papers, books, lectures, speeches, and sermons he is told that perseverance alone will put the highest prizes within his grasp. What, then, can explain the contentedness of the millions who, as the French say, never "pierce" the level of mediocrity? What is the great American safety-valve for these ambitions for precedence which our national life generates, fosters, and stimulates, without adequate provision for their gratification?

A friend from abroad, without the philosophic insight of Mr. Bryce or the illuminating wit of Max O'Rell, was once presenting to me what seemed to him the serious phases of this problem. I thought myself competent to make

the explanation; but I did not know how to take hold of the subject. We were standing in the office of a large hotel at the time, when an incident gave me the clue.

There walked up to the register a sturdy American citizen, who seized the pen as if he were about to sign some momentous document. Bending over the open page of the book, he scrawled his name, his mouth moving and writhing with every twist of the pen. It occurred to me to look at the record of this new arrival, and this is what I saw: "Hon. Sock Bruitt, Chairman of the Committee on Pumps, Whiskyville, Texas."

Seizing this thread, I proceeded to unravel as best I could the tangled skein of American life as it is organized into social, business, religious, and other associations, all of them elaborately officered.

Until I made the effort to explain the matter to "an alien to the commonwealth," I had never realized the full significance of the nonpolitical office-holding class in our country as a factor in the national life.

Take a city directory and examine the list of organizations usually printed in such a publication: you will see ample provision for the local ambitions of all the inhabitants. Take one of the books issued by a "live" church; examine the list of societies, devotional, missionary, temperance, young people's, Sunday-school, charitable, etc. The matter will be made clearer still if you study the subject in a small village where universal acquaintance is possible.

I made a test case of one small town, and found that every man, woman, and child (above ten years of age) in the place held an office- with the exception of a few scores of flabby, jellyfish characters, whose lack of ambition or enterprise removes them from consideration as elements of the problem.

But mere local precedence does not satisfy the more aspiring minds; hence, nearly all

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