T

HE first of their crimes to reach the ears of Mr. Beecham, the youngest master, was Wilfred Reginald's. The morning after the Hallowe'en masquerade Wilfred Reginald arose before any other boy in either of the two dormitories was awake, went up-stairs to the infirmary in his pajamas and slippers, put himself to bed, and refused to get up.

"I'm sick," he announced to Miss Canfield, the nurse, when she found him there as she passed by the door on her way to her bath-room. "I have a pain in my stummick, my head hurts awful', and I think I have a high fever."

Miss Canfield dropped her towels, ran for her faithful thermometer, and took his temperature at once. She was relieved to find it normal.

"Wilfred Reginald," she said, "there is nothing in the world the matter with you, or you would have a temperature. I'll give you a little bicarbonate, and you can go on down-stairs with the other fellows."

"I don't wanta go down-stairs!" wailed Wilfred Reginald.

"Now, don't be stubborn, Wilfred Reginald. You know you have to sing to-day. There's nothing at all the matter with you, and Dr. Sinclair is depending upon you for your solo. You must go down."

"I don't wanta go down-stairs!" he wailed. He delivered his ultimatum: "And I'm not going to go-and-I'm

a very sick boy, if you only knew. You have n't got any feeling for me; you have n't got my pain in your stummick!"

He burst into perfectly genuine sobs. Miss Canfield was desperate. If Wilfred Reginald persisted in his obstinacy, it meant that she would have two patients on her hands before the end of the day, and one of them an adult; for Dr. Sinclair, the choir-master, would be a nervous wreck after even-song.

Wilfred Reginald was important. Not only was he the chief soloist of the cathedral choir, but the greatest boy soprano in the world. He meant everything to Dr. Sinclair. It was Dr. Sinclair who had developed his voice from the mere melodious rill it was in the child of nine until it had become a wonderful flood of pure silver sound in the boy of thirteen. the boy of thirteen. This marvelous voice had become for the choir-master a cult, a second religion. If Wilfred Reginald became uncomfortable from overeating, the choir-master would be white and drawn with anxiety; and if Wilfred Reginald came in with wet feet, the choir-master would suffer all the nerve-racking tortures of a sleepless night. With Wilfred Reginald actually ill or as good as ill, and cutting his solo, anything might happen.

Wilfred Reginald knew this perfectly well, and the choir-master knew that he knew it. He also knew that this was the first time the boy had ever

failed to come up to the mark. His regard for Dr. Sinclair, combined with a deep artistic pride in his own amazing gift, had spurred him on many an occasion to sing when, from real illness, he had hardly strength to walk in the procession in his heavy cotta. It was the knowledge of all this which dumfounded Dr. Sinclair when Miss Canfield told him at breakfast of Wilfred Reginald's delinquency and implored him to help bring the child to reason.

But their combined efforts were of no avail, and that evening Miss Canfield's worst predictions were justified. After the most trying day in Dr. Sinclair's life, she had to put an ice-cap on his head, give him a soothing draft for his nerves, and keep watch over him until he fell asleep.

Monday morning, after twenty-four hours in a dreary infirmary with all the blinds drawn, Wilfred Reginald made up his mind that he was sufficiently convalescent to come downstairs. But the relief of Dr. Sinclair's mind was to be short-lived. The disaster Wilfred Reginald had deliberately wrought upon the music proved to be only the first concussion of a veritable tidal wave of crime that swept over the school.

After giving first aid to a limp and prostrate Mack and carrying him in to Miss Canfield's ministering care, he found the boys waiting for him in the common-room. They were pale with their terror at what had occurred, but their eyes gleamed with eager interest in the impending catastrophe they expected for Vane. Yet their paradoxical school-boy loyalty toward him held them silent.

"What did he do to make you so furious?" the youngest master asked, gently. "You must have had some reason."

"I don't know, sir," answered Vane. "He just made me mad, that 's all."

"Aw, you do know, too!" exclaimed Carson, indignantly. They felt that their need for loyalty had passed. There had been no explosion. Vane had not been struck down by the cataclysmic wrath of the gods, and the anticlimax left them too flat. Unconsciously, they began to manufacture drama to relieve it. "He said Queenie would let just anybody kiss her, and you crowned him!"

"Queenie's Vane's girl!" chirped one of the youngest boys, rapturously.

"She's not so my girl, neither!" cried Vane, forgetting his troubles in the joy of approaching conflict. "She's Wilfred Reginald's girl. He invited her, I guess.'

"You kissed her, anyhow," yelled Carson, "and she 's your girl. I would n't kiss any ol' girls."

"Aw, Carson," shrieked one of the youngest boys, "you kissed her yourself! I sawr it-behind the gymnasyum door!" he added rhythmically.

"Well, she 's not my girl, anyhow!” claimed Carson, defiantly. "She's Wilfred Reginald's," repeated Vane.

"She's not," said Wilfred Reginald. "Queenie's Vane's girl! Queenie's Vane's girl!" chanted a Greek chorus of youngest boys in ecstasy.

"She would n't dance. with you, neither," Vane went on, determined to divert the ridicule from himself. "She would n't dance with any boy in nothing but a crummy ol' clown suit. She told me so."

"She did so dance with me!" yelled Wilfred Reginald. "I can prove it."

"Nothing but the first dance," said Vane, contemptuously, "an' she had to do that. A girl just has to dance the first dance with the fellow what invites her. An' that's why you stayed in the infirmary that day an' would n't sing, an' everything. You were afraid we'd laugh at you because the girl you invited would n't dance with you. Yah! you were a 'fraid-cat!"

"Queenie would n't dance with him!" chanted the Greek chorus. "Queenie would n't dance with WIL-furd REG’nuld!"

Tears of humiliation came to Wilfred Reginald's eyes, but he managed a parting shot.

"Well, I guess a nice clown suit 's just as good as your mother's old jacket with ruffles sewed on it."

Vane had appeared at the masquerade ingeniously disguised as a "courtier under Louis XIV."

The master had let the argument proceed until he had gleaned enough facts to form a basis for further investigation, and then he brought it to an abrupt close by announcing that the next one to speak would go to the school-room at once. He wanted to know more definitely the precise character of Queenie's depredations. He remembered distinctly the spectacular appearance of the vulgar little girl at

the masquerade, and he knew only too well what might be the background of one invited by Wilfred Reginald Koontz, that child of high-flaming genius and low, sordid extraction. After he had satisfactorily disposed of Vane for the present, he kept Carson, who seemed to be one of the principal figures in the drama, until they were alone in the common-room together.

"Tell me, Carson," he began seriously, "for it is something I really must know. Why did you kiss Queenie Kelly?"

"I did n't want to," protested the boy. "Really, I did n't."

"Well, why on earth did you do it, then?"

"She made me, sir."

"Oh," said the master. Then he added, "How could she make you kiss her?"

"She said, if I did n't, I was—I was slow."

"Oh," said the master again. It was worse than he had believed. “What an awful child!" he said as he strode down the hall, "and what an ungodly name!" He was thinking of Queenie Kelly.

That evening he went to confer with the head-master before he led Vane into the presence.

"Cherchez la femme," said the headmaster, thoughtfully. "We must not allow her to be invited again."

But the effects of Queenie's depravity continued. The school post-box was full every day of letters bearing Queenie Kelly's East Twenty-third Street address. Stone, the steadiest boy in the school, who plugged away at everything he did until he had taken every prize the school had to offer, took to using the study hour for the composition of long epistles to the enchantress, and his average declined

twenty-five per cent. Even Desmond, the devout, plunged incontinently into sin. He was the boy who, after wearing out the knees of his knickers praying in the cathedral, and the knees of his pajamas praying beside his bed, had rifled his mother's pocket-book of fifty cents, which, it developed, he added to his weekly allowance for the purchase of a box of candy as a present to Queenie. Desmond managed to obtain a pious satisfaction from his one sin after a blameless life.

"Now," said he, "I won't have to make up something to confess the next time I make my self-examination."

§ 3

Although time and the shortness of the memories of children slowly effected a reconstruction, and by the Christmas holidays Queenie was completely forgotten as far as the youngest master could ascertain, he feared in

"Well, I guess a nice clown suit 's just as good as your mother's old jacket'

his soul a recrudescence of her after the post-Lenten dance. Already Dr. Sinclair had announced that he was preparing a musical surprise to spring upon a waiting world the very Sunday following the Saturday night upon which this dance was to be given, and the youngest master talked the matter over with Miss Hanson, the housemother. The head-master also spoke to her about it.

Two weeks before every dance the boys wrote upon little slips of paper the names and addresses of those whom they wished to invite, which, under promise of strict secrecy, they gave to Miss Hanson. If by chance there lingered in any of their minds a memory of the siren strong enough to induce an invitation, she could simply omit it from her list.

"I was on the point of not sending the first one," she said. "I had some idea of what she might be like."

"Well, there's no fear of Wilfred Reginald doing it again," said the youngest master. "She pretty thoroughly sat on him the last time, and it looks as if the others have forgotten her."

"Even if they have n't," said Miss Hanson, meaningly, "a slip of paper is a very easy thing to lose."

$ 4

The months after the Christmas holidays passed with nothing untoward to interrupt the even tenor of school life, with the possible exception of Wilfred Reginald's unaccountable behavior with regard to his weekly allowance. He refused to spend a penny of it, and deliberately cut himself off from all excursions and parties involving any expenditure, however small. He even took to walking all the long

distance home on Sunday evenings, no matter how bleak the weather, to avoid spending car-fare.

This worried Dr. Sinclair, who passed every winter a constant prey to the terror of a possible epidemic of sore throats, and he began giving Wilfred Reginald car-fare for the weekends. Late one Sunday evening he encountered the boy half-way between the cathedral and Twenty-third Street, trudging doggedly home, fingering the nickels of the unspent car-fare in his pocket.

"Have you no regard whatsoever," exploded the great choir-master, frightening the child half out of his wits, "for the greatest voice God ever sent a cathedral choir?”

The perfidy of Wilfred Reginald with regard to the unspent nickels escaped him entirely, but from that time on he lived in mortal dread of what that extraordinary child might do. It presently appeared that Wilfred Reginald was indulging a secret passion with his ill-got hoardings, and the news was noised abroad that he was collecting fine raiment and concealing it in the lower drawer of his chiffonnier. First arrived a pair of trousers of dazzling white flannel. Later came a shirt of crêpe de Chine. These two garments were followed by a long succession of smaller accessories, including a violent purple tie brocaded with gold, and a pair of socks that would have put to shame Joseph in his spectacular coat and Solomon in all his glory.

It was not until a few weeks before the post-Lenten dance that the root of this strange passion became apparent. Miss Hanson was presiding over the ritual of the masters' coffee in the common-room after Sunday dinner, an

observance which was one of her many contributions to the tone of the school.

"For once you are mistaken," she said to the youngest master; "Wilfred Reginald has done it again."

"What do you mean, Miss Hanson?" "He has invited Queenie' "He 's simply unaccountable!" he declared, almost dropping his coffee

cup.

"It hurt me very much not to send the invitation," she continued, “for I believe he is counting on it. He has the most gorgeous collection of clothes in the lower drawer of his chiffonnier-"

"So that's what they 're for!" said the youngest master. "I've been wondering what he might be up to, but I never suspected-"

"That he was attempting a sartorial conquest of the lady?" rumbled the head-master, with an appreciative twinkle.

"The 'crummy ol' clown suit,'" said the youngest master-"of course that's it!"

The choir-master, who up to this time had taken no part in the conversation, was becoming redder and redder with excitement. His face was nearly purple with emotion as he fairly shouted:

"That invitation must be sent!"

"Dr. Sinclair," exclaimed Miss Hanson, "have you forgotten the last time she came?"

"It will be worse if she does n't come. The service is too important. If he discovers that we did n't invite her, you cannot tell what that child will do. I cannot risk it. He 'll do something outlandish. He'll ruin the service. He won't sing.'

"Are we dealing with temperamental operatic stars, Dr. Sinclair?" asked Miss Hanson, smiling.