emerald lawns planted with immense oak-trees, and in their grateful shade a muddle of ladies and gentlemen and parasols and little tables. The background was filled with the towers of Windsor Castle, flying three Union Jacks, and in the middle of the picture the old queen, like a tea-cozy with a head on top of it. "I wonder if it really looked like that." Millie stared at the flowery ladies, who simpered back at her. "I would n't care for that sort of thing. Too much side, what with the queen an' one thing an' another." Over the packing-case dressing-table there was a large photograph of her and Sid, taken on their wedding-day. Nice picture that-if you do like. She was sitting down in a basket-chair, in her cream cashmere and satin ribbons, and Sid, standing with one hand on her shoulder, looking at her bouquet. And behind them there were some fern-trees and a waterfall, and Mount Cook in the distance, covered with snow. She had almost forgotten her wedding-day; time did pass so, and if you had n't any one to talk things over with, they soon dropped out of your mind. "I wunner why we never had no kids." She shrugged her shoulders, gave it up. "Well, I 've never missed them. I would n't be surprised if Sid had, though. He 's softer than me."

And then she sat, quiet, thinking of nothing at all, her red, swollen hands rolled in her apron, her feet stuck out in front of her, her little head, with the thick screw of dark hair, drooped on her chest. chest. "Tick-tick" "Tick-tick" went the kitchen clock, the ashes clinked in the grate, and the Venetian blind knocked against the kitchen window. Quite suddenly Millie felt frightened. A queer trembling started inside her—in her stomach-and then spread all over

to her knees and hands. "There's somebody about."

She tiptoed to the door and peered into the kitchen. Nobody there; the veranda doors were closed, the blinds were down, and in the dusky light the white face of the clock shone, and the furniture seemed to bulge and breathe and listen, too. The clock, the ashes, and the Venetian, and then again

something else, like steps in the back yard. "Go an' see what it is, Millie Evans!" She darted to the back door, opened it, and at the same moment some one ducked behind the wood-pile.

"Who 's that?" she cried in a loud, bold voice. "Come out o' that! I seen yer. I know where you are. I got my gun. Come out from behind of that wood-stack." She was not frightened any more. She was furiously angry. Her heart banged like a drum. "I'll teach you to play tricks with a woman!" she yelled, and she took a gun from the kitchen corner, and dashed down the veranda steps, across the glaring yard to the other side of the wood-stack. A young man lay there, on his stomach, one arm across his face.

"Get up! You 're shamming!" Still holding the gun, she kicked him in the shoulders. He gave no sign. "O my God, I believe he 's dead!" She knelt down, seized hold of him, and turned him over on his back. He rolled like a sack. She crouched back on her haunches, staring; her lips and nostrils fluttered with horror.

§ 2

He was not much more than a boy, with fair hair, and a growth of fair down on his lips and chin. His eyes were open, rolled up, showing the whites, and his face was patched with

dust caked with sweat. He wore a cotton shirt and trousers, with sandshoes on his feet. One of the legs of the trousers stuck to his leg with a patch of dark blood. "I can't!" said Millie, and then, "You 've got to!" She bent over and felt his heart. "Wait a minute," she stammered, "wait a minute," and she ran into the house for brandy and a pail of water. "What are you going to do, Millie Evans? Oh, I don't know. I never seen any one in a dead faint before."

She knelt down, put her arm under the boy's head, and poured some brandy between his lips. It spilled down both sides of his mouth. She dipped a corner of her apron in the water and wiped his face and his hair and his throat with fingers that trembled. Under the dust and sweat his face gleamed as white as her apron, and thin, and puckered in little lines. A strange, dreadful feeling gripped Millie Evans's bosom; some seed that had never flourished there unfolded, and struck deep roots and burst into painful leaf.

to shut her teeth and clench her hand to stop from crying.

After a long pause he said in the little voice of a child talking in his sleep, "I'm hungry." His lips quivered. She scrambled to her feet and stood over him.

"You come right into the house and have a set-down meal," she said. "Can you walk?"

"Yes," he whispered, and, swaying, he followed her across the glaring yard to the veranda. At the bottom step he paused, looking at her again. "I'm not coming in," he said. He sat on the veranda step in the little pool of shade that lay round the house. Millie watched him.

"When did yer last 'ave anythink to eat?" He shook his head. She cut a chunk off the greasy corned beef and a round of bread plastered with butter; but when she brought it he was standing up, glancing round him, and paid no attention to the plate of food.

"When are they coming back?" he stammered.

At that moment she knew. She

The boy breathed sharply, half choked, his eyelids quivered, and he moved his head from side to side.

"You 're better," said Millie, smoothing his hair. "Feeling fine now again, ain't you?" The pain in her bosom half suffocated her. "It's no good you crying, Millie Evans. You got to keep your head." Quite suddenly he sat up, and leaned against the wood-pile away from her, staring on the ground. "There now!" cried Millie Evans in a strange, shaking voice. The boy turned and looked at her, still not speaking, but his eyes were so full of pain and terror that she had

was Harrison; he was the English johnny who 'd killed Mr. Williamson.

"I know who you are," she said very slowly; "yer can't fox me. You 're Harrison. That 's who you are. I must have been blind in me two eyes not to 'ave known from the first."

He made a movement with his hands as though that was all nothing. "When are they coming back?" And she meant to say: "Any minute. They're on their way now." Instead, she said to the dreadful, frightened face:

"Not till 'arf past ten." He sat down, leaning against one of the veranda poles. His face broke up into

little quivers. He shut his eyes, and tears streamed down his cheeks. "Nothing but a kid. An' all them fellows after him. 'E don't stand any more of a chance than a kid would."

"Try a bit of beef," said Millie. "It's the food you want; somethink to steady your stomach." She moved across the veranda and sat down beside him, the plate on her knees. ""Ere, try a bit." She broke the bread and butter into little pieces, and she thought: "They won't ketch 'im. Not if I can 'elp it. Men is all beasts. I don' care wot 'e 's done, or wot 'e 'as n't done. See 'im through, Millie Evans. 'E's nothink but a sick kid.”

§3

Millie lay on her back, her eyes wide open, listening. Sid turned over, hunched the quilt round his shoulders, muttered, "Good night, ole girl." She heard Willie Cox and the other chap drop their clothes on to the kitchen floor, and then their voices, and Willie Cox saying: "Lie down, Gumboil! Lie down, yer little devil!" to his dog. The house dropped quiet. She lay and listened. Little pulses tapped in her body, listening, too. It was hot. She was frightened to She was frightened to move because of Sid. "E must get off. 'E must. I don' care anythink about justice an' all the rot they 've bin spouting to-night," she thought savagely. "Ow are yer to know what anythink's like till yer do know? It's all rot." She strained to the silence. He ought to be moving. Before there was a sound from outside, Willie Cox's Gumboil got up and padded sharply across the kitchen floor and sniffed at

the back door. Terror started up in Millie. "What 's that dog doing? Uh! what a fool that young fellow is with a dog 'anging about! Why don't 'e lie down an' sleep?" The dog stopped, but she knew it was listening. Suddenly, with a sound that made her cry out in horror, the dog started barking and rushing to and fro.

"What 's that? What 's up?" Sid flung out of bed.

"It ain't nothink. It's only Gumboil. Sid! Sid!" She clutched his arm, but he shook her off.

"My Christ, there's somethink up! My God!" Sid flung into his trousers. Willie Cox opened the back door. Gumboil in a fury darted out into the yard, round the corner of the house. "Sid, there's some one in the paddock," roared the other chap.

"What is it? What 's that?" Sid dashed out on to the front veranda. "Here, Millie, take the lantin! Willie, some skunk 's got 'old of one of the 'orses!" The three men bolted out of the house, and at the same moment Millie saw Harrison dash across the paddock on Sid's horse, and down the road.

"Millie, bring that blasted lantin!"

She ran in her bare feet, her nightdress flicking her legs. They were after him in a flash. And at the sight of Harrison in the distance, and the three men hot after, a strange, mad joy smothered everything else. She rushed into the road; she laughed and shrieked and danced in the dust, jigging the lantern.

"A-ah! Arter 'im, Sid! A-a-a-h! ketch 'im, Willie! Go it! Go it! A-ah, Sid! Shoot 'im down! Shoot 'im!"

T

HIS is how I happen to be completing the unfinished article of the late Mr. Smith Jones, the eminent psychologist, on the tremendous effect of the abolition of advertising. Mr. Smith Jones was taken with what at first appeared to be a severe cold while writing his paper. If the domestic sent to have the prescription filled had been able to find a drug-store, Mr. Smith Jones might have lived to complete his own paper. But the neighborhood drug-store on which his family depended had gone quietly out of business without any body being the wiser, and the maid walked many blocks without finding another. There were others, of course. She no doubt passed several, but it is hard nowadays to tell a drug-store from a grocery or any other kind of store. There are no signs over the doors, and the bottles of colored water, which I have heard were a quaint method of indicating a pharmacist in olden times, must have disappeared from the windows along with all other evidences of what the shop had to sell.

Indeed, all shop-windows are now covered with half screens of fine wire netting, like those once used by oldfashioned banking-houses, that the sight of the goods may not inadvertently advertise them. As Mr. Smith Jones observes in his paper, "the stores had no way to sell goods except by having goods to sell."

Mr. Smith Jones's cold developed into pneumonia, and what with the delay in finding the remedy first prescribed, and then the rapid progress of the disease, he died at a comparatively early age. This was in 1954. Some medical men will recall that the Pettingill serum, which has proved so efficacious in the treatment of pneumonia, was perfected as early as 1943, and that long before 1954 no case had ended fatally where it was promptly used. Unfortunately, the Smith Jones family physician had never heard of it. It was difficult for such news to gain currency without taking advantage of what used to be known as advertising, a force which had been eliminated from the affairs of mankind by some strange

influence the exact nature of which is not yet understood. At any rate, Smith Jones died, and among his papers was found this description of a world without advertising, obviously incomplete.

That was fifty years ago, and the article remained with his other papers, mainly studies in psychology, until they came into my hands by inheritance. Dr. Smith Jones was my greatgrandmother's brother. On reading "Does It Pay to Advertise?" I was struck by his picture of the immediate effects of no advertising and selling on the habits and comforts of the people, and the contrast it offered to the actual conditions as we all know them to-day. My great grand-uncle no doubt died blissfully ignorant that his optimistic and enthusiastic picture was an illusion, a transitional state changing from day to day, and changing the lives and habits of the nation along with it, though if he were really the great psychologist he was said to be, he must have sensed the disintegration that was already under way before he died. At any rate, since his paper describes things which happened before I was born, and his description is presumably accurate as far as it goes, it may be of some value to future social economists if I continue his narrative and describe briefly the course of events from the point where his work was stopped by the hand of death.

Dr. Smith Jones begins by describing the strange cataclysm that suddenly removed advertising and salesmanship from the world, which occurred October 15, 1924, and he had reached that point in his narrative where the results appeared almost wholly beneficial. Appearances were deceptive, however, as people soon

began to realize. For a time the public enjoyed the benefits of advertising without the drawbacks. People had their habits established, and the stores and shops were filled with the goods they were accustomed to buy, and they knew where these shops were; so for some time the only effect manifest to the careless observer was the absence of the advertising. The flow of goods to and from the stores was like some mighty machine which, once started, ran for a while with its own momentum even after the power had been withdrawn.

Students of business and other trained observers were nevertheless aware that the machine was running down. Every now and then a retail store went out of business, and no new one took its place. The number of shops grew steadily less. There were many empty buildings on every street, but the fact was not perceived at first, because there was no way of telling from the outside that a store was not functioning as usual. From the outside a store that had permanently closed its doors looked exactly like one that was open for business. That is, both looked equally dead.

The only persons who were aware of the fact when a store went out of business were its customers, those who were in the habit of trading there, and who were tremendously inconvenienced by the high rate of mortality. When the inevitable happened, this group of customers was cast adrift and immediately began the search for a new store of the same class, and when they found one, it was not so near and not so convenient. They resumed their buying there until that likewise succumbed, and they had to begin all over again. And this was happening