UNCLE ALF was seated with Dora on the terrace at Grote one afternoon late in August. Dora herself was hatless and cloakless, for it was a day of windless and summer heat, but Uncle Alf had an overcoat on, and a very shabby old gray shawl in addition cast about his shoulders. His face wore an expression of ludicrous malevolence.

“And I had to come out here, my dear, and take refuge with you,” he said, “for Maria will drive me off my head with talk of that tumour of hers. Why, she speaks as if nobody had ever had a tumour before. I said to her, ‘Maria, if it had been cancer now, and you’d got over as you have, it might have been something to make a tale of.’ But tumour, God bless me! and benignant, so Sir Henry said, at that.”

Dora gave a little shriek of laughter.

“Uncle Alf, sometimes I think you’re the unkindest man in the whole world,” she said, “and even when you’re most unkind I can’t help laughing. I wonder if you are unkind really. I don’t expect so.”

Uncle Alf took no notice of this, and went on with his grievances.

“As for Eddie, I’m sure I don’t know what to make of him,” he said. “I shouldn’t wonder if he’s going soft-headed, for he was always threatened that way, to my thinking. He can talk of nothing but the brave and beautiful Maria. Lord! my dear, it’s a wonder to me that you can stand it. Doesn’t it get on your nerves? Doesn’t it make you feel sick and ill to hear how they go on?”

Dora laughed again.

“No, Uncle Alf, it doesn’t, do you know? You see I was with them through all those dreadful days in the summer after the operation, when they still didn’t know what it was for certain, and had to make an examination, and it made a tremendous impression on me. I always used to think that they all, including Claude, were very ordinary people. Well, they’re not. They were very wonderful. They were cheerful, even when they were waiting for a verdict that might have been so terrible.”

“Bah!” said Uncle Alf.

“Yes, if you wish. They used to get on my nerves, that is quite true, and you gave me a hint about it once which was very useful. You told me to see the humorous side of Dad and Mother.”

“Lord, it’s Dad and Mother, is it?” said Alf, in a tone of acid disgust.

“Yes, Dad and Mother. Just as you are Uncle Alf, but I’ll call you Mr. Osborne if you prefer. Very well, then, I took that hint, and sometimes now I laugh at them, which I never did before. I often laugh at them now, and let them see me laughing, and Dad says to Mother, ‘There’s Dora at her jokes again. What have you said?’ They know how I love them. Dear, don’t make such awful faces. They were so splendid, you know.”

“And Claude?” asked his uncle, after a pause.

“I didn’t do justice, or anything like it, to Claude till then,” she said. “He used to get on my nerves, too, very badly indeed. I don’t mind telling you, since I’ve told him, and we’ve laughed over that. But all that time in July, combined with something very fine that I found out he had done, made me see that what got on my nerves did not matter in the least. What mattered was Claude himself, whom I didn’t know before.”

“I love that boy,” said Uncle Alf, with unusual tenderness, “and I’m glad you do, my dear, because he deserves all the love you can give him. But I am glad you laugh at him, too. There’s no sense in not seeing the ridiculous side of people.”

“Oh yes, I laugh at him often,” said Dora. “I think he likes it. You see, he’s so dreadfully fond of me that he likes all I do.”

Uncle Alf gave a contemptuous sniff.

“Yes, he’s off his head about you,” he said. “I thought he had more sense. But there’s very little sense in anybody when you come to know them.”

“I know: it’s foolish of him,” said Dora. “I tell him so. But then I’m foolish about him. I expect if two people are foolish about each other, they can stand a lot of the other’s folly, though I expect it isn’t grammar. It is rather nice to be foolish about a man, if he happens to be your husband.”

“It seems to me you married him first, and fell in love with him afterward,” said Uncle Alf.

“That’s exactly what I did do,” said Dora softly.

“And what’s this fine thing Claude did?” asked the other. “Gave a cabman a sovereign, I suppose, and told him to keep the change. Much he’d miss it. And you thought that was devilish noble. Eh?”

“I can’t tell you what it was,” said she. “Nobody must know that.”

Uncle Alf was silent a minute: he wanted to say something ill-tempered but could not think of anything.

“Well, I’m glad the boy’s done something to deserve you, my dear,” he said, “though that sounds as if I was getting soft-headed, too, and perhaps I am, joining like this in this chorus of praise, this—this domestic symphony. But I can stand you and Claude: what I can’t stand is Eddie and Maria. Lord! if they aren’t coming out here, when I thought I had escaped. She in her bath chair, and he pushing it. A man of his age, and as stout as that. He’ll be bursting himself one of these days, and then we shall have Maria making us all sick with telling us how beautifully he bore it, and nobody behaved so bravely over a burst as her Eddie.”

Dora giggled hopelessly.

“Oh! you are such a darling,” she said. “I don’t mind what you say.”

The bath chair had approached, and Lady Osborne put down her sunshade as they came into the strip of shadow where Dora and Uncle Alf sat. He edged away from her as far as the angle of the house and the flower beds would permit.

“Well, and if this isn’t pleasant,” she said. “Eddie, my dear, we’ll stop here a bit and have a rest, if we’re not interrupting, and indeed it’s near teatime, and I want my tea badly to-day, I do. But my appetite’s been so good since my operation——”

Alf broke in.

“Maria, if I hear any more about you and your operation, I leave the house,” he said.

“Well, and I’m sure that’s the last thing I want you to do,” said Lady Osborne genially, “for I’m enjoying this little family party such as never was. Why, all the time I was getting better in London I was looking forward to it, and dreamed about it too. There now, Alf, don’t be so tetchy, stopping your ears in that manner, as if you had the neuralgia and was sitting in a draught. I was only going to say I’d been looking forward to a week or two of quiet down here with you all, and pleased I was to know that you would join us, instead of setting on Richmond Hill with the motors and all buzzing round you and raising clouds of dust with germs uncountable. Mr. O., my dear, you’re all of a perspiration with pushing me, and thank you. Won’t you be wise to put a wrap on, same as your brother does, when he sits out of doors, especially with you in that heat?”

“No, my dear, I’m comfortable enough. I was only wondering whether Dora was wise to sit here in that thin dress. It’ll strike chill before sunset.”

Dora again burst out laughing.

“Dad, we shall drive Uncle Alf off his head if we all think so much about each other,” she said. “He’s been making a formal complaint to me about it. He finds us all very trying!”

“And where’s Claude and Jim?” asked Alf. “I hope they’re taking great care of each other. Claude cut his finger this morning, and he bore it wonderfully. Never a cry nor a sob. But I wonder at you, Maria, letting them ride horses all about the country, without a doctor or a pair of surgeons to follow them in case of accidents. They might fall off and be hurt. A savage and dangerous beast is a horse, and more especially a mare, such as Claude was riding.”

Lady Osborne entirely refused to notice the sarcastic intent of this.

“Well, to be sure, we’ve all got to take our risks,” she said. “There’d be no sense in passing your life wrapped up in cotton-wool, and waiting for the doctor!”

“Why, and you used to ride too, when you was a lad, Alf,” said her husband. “You’re making Dora laugh at you. And I don’t wonder: I could laugh myself!”

Alf got up from his chair.

“I think you’d both be the better for an operation, you and Maria,” he said. “I should have a bit of humour put in, instead of a bit of tumour taken out. Not but what it’s a far more serious affair. I doubt if either of you would get over it.”

“Well, and it’s you who talked about my tumour this time,” said Lady Osborne triumphantly.

This was too much for Alf: he walked shufflingly back to the house, leaving his sister-in-law in possession of the field. But she used her victory nobly, with pity for the conquered.

Lady Osborne looked round in a discreet and penetrating manner after he had gone and was out of hearing.

“Dora, my dear, you mustn’t mind what Alf says,” she remarked with much acuteness. “He gets a bit sour now and then, and I’m sure I don’t wonder, with his lumbago, and no one to look after him. If only he had found a nice girl to look after him when he was young! Poor old Alf! But you can take it from me as knows him, he doesn’t really mean all he says. It’s his joke, and I’m not one to quarrel with a joke, and bless him, why shouldn’t he joke in his own way just as the rest of us do? And if sometimes he seems a bit ill-humoured over his joke—well, you let him get his bit of ill-humour off his mind, and he’ll be all the better for it. I never take no notice and it don’t hurt me. ‘Alf and his joke,’ I say over to myself, and no harm done.”

“Rum old cove is Alf,” said her husband; “he seems sometimes to want to quarrel with us all. But it takes two to make a quarrel, and he’ll have hard work to find the second in this house, if I know who lives in it. And he was just as anxious as he could be, Maria, when you was at your worst in the summer, telephoning five and six times in the day, till I said down the tube, ‘Maria’s love, and she’s asleep till morning.’ And what it’ll be when Dora here——”

“Mr. O., you go too far,” said his wife in a shrill aside. “But as you were saying about Alf, if there’s crust outside there’s crumb within. It’s a soft heart like your own, Mr. O., though he don’t know it.”

“Dad, when last were you angry with anybody?” asked Dora. “Can you remember?”

Lord Osborne considered this: it was a question that required research.

“Well, my dear, if you leave out things like my being angry with the Mother for giving us all such a fright last July—there’s one for you, Maria—I couldn’t rightly say. I had a dishonest foreman I remember at the works whom I had to dismiss, summary, too, one Monday morning, but I think I was more sorry for his wife and children than I was angry with him. Nine children there was, and another expected, poor lamb! and stillborn when it came, for I inquired.”

Dora saw Lady Osborne shoot out a furtive finger at him, and he understood.

“Then I was angry with Claude one day,” he continued, “when he was a little lad. I think the devil must have been in the boy, for what must he do but rake out the fire from his mother’s drawing room grate, and dump it all on the hearthrug. And yet I could scarce help laughing even when I gave him his spanking. What was in the boy’s head that he should think of a trick like that? Perhaps it was his joke, too, something that looks mischievous at first, like old Alf’s jokes. I’ll take another cup of tea, Mother, for here’s Claude coming with Jim, and such a tea-pot drainer as Claude I never saw.”

“Yes, I doubt he’ll injure his stomach,” said Lady Osborne, “for I’m told that tea tans the coats of it like so much leather. Sir Henry told me so when we were having a chat one morning, after he’d dressed the place for me.”

“Well, the less we know about our insides the better, to my way of thinking,” said her husband, “until there’s some call to see what’s going on. Eat your dinner and drink your wine and get your sleep of nights, and you’ve done what you can to keep it contented.”

“And I’m sure none’s got a better right to tell us how to keep well than you, my dear,” said Lady Osborne appreciatively, “for bar a bit of gout now and then, as it isn’t reasonable you should be spared, there’s not an hour’s anxiety your health’s given me since first we met, Mr. O., and here’s the boys ready for their tea, I’ll be bound. Old Alf, and his saying that he wondered at me allowing them to go horseback!”

All this, these quiet ordinary domestic conversations, as well as things of far greater import, had entirely changed in character for Dora. But it was for her only that they had changed; in themselves they were exactly as they had been before there came those days which, so she put it to herself, had opened her eyes and given sight to them. For she had labelled them trivial or tiresome, according as her own mood had varied, and though discussion on subjects of high artistic or spiritual import was not rare but unknown among the Osbornes, she had now the sense to see that the kindly utterances of simple people possibly illustrated though they did not allude to qualities that were not at all trivial. For she saw now the personalities that lay behind these details of their life, the hearts out of which the mouths spoke. It was that which gave its tone to what had become music: and if Lord Osborne lingered in his cellar to find a bottle of wine that Sir Thomas appreciated, it was no longer Sir Thomas’s undoubted greediness that concerned her, but his host’s desire that his guest should enjoy himself. And she knew now that the spirit which did not think it trivial to see that the dinner was good, or that the wine was plentiful, was perfectly capable of rising to higher levels than these. When there was a call for courage, courage of a very wonderful sort had answered; when endurance was needed, endurance was there; when charity, as in the case of Jim, the charity that met the difficult and disgraceful situation was complete, and had all the fineness and delicacy which only perfect simplicity can give. How Claude had done it she did not know; there seemed no question of finesse or of diplomatic behaviour. He had merely behaved without difficulty, like Claude, and but a few weeks afterward there was Jim, sensitive and highly strung as he always was, staying with them all, not like a guest, but as one of the family, as Lady Osborne loved to think. And it was not that he was lacking in the sense of shame that made his friendship with Claude possible: it was that he, like Dora, had had his eyes opened. A heart as kind as Claude’s counted for something after all: they both, it must be supposed, had taken it for granted until it was shown them. But the sight of it, the practical knowledge of it, worked the miracle, worked it easily, as if there was no miracle about it.

Dora had gone to her room shortly after tea to rest, on the diplomatic prompting of her mother-in-law. With so many gentlemen present, Lady Osborne would never have said, “Dora, the doctor told you to rest for a couple of hours before dinner,” but she had reminded her that she had several letters to write for the post. And Dora, secretly and kindly smiling, had remembered at once, though (like the almug trees) there were no such letters. And with her to her room she took up the parcel of thought that has been indicated, for she wanted to examine its contents a little more closely before Claude came up, as he always did, to read to her for a while before she dressed. Right at the bottom of the packet, she knew, there lay something very precious. She would look at that by and by, with him perhaps.

But in spite of the preponderance that qualities of the heart had now gained in her mind compared to what must be called qualities of the surface, to which belonged such things as beauty and breeding, she found that the latter had not at all lost their value. But she saw such things differently. They had assumed, so it seemed to her, not a truer value, but the true value. She loved Claude’s beauty more than even in those enchanted days of honeymoon in Venice, not only now because it was beauty, but because it was Claude’s, while such superficial failings as were undoubtedly his she laughed at still, but now without bitterness or irritation. They were funny: to say a “handsome lady” was still ludicrous, but now, since it was Claude who said it, it could not help being lovable. Indeed she and Jim had invented what they called “The Claude Catechism,” which began, “Are you a handsome lady? No, but I am a perfect gentleman.” And then Claude would throw whatever was handiest at Jim’s head.

And how, like Pharaoh, had she at one time hardened her heart, refusing to give admittance, so it seemed to her now, to that sunshine of beautiful qualities that was always ready to stream in upon her. He had never failed her, he had always been patient, waiting for the door to open, for the closed windows to be unbarred. True, in the early days he thought they had been unbarred, that he had full admittance, but in the weeks that followed, when it was clear to him that ingress was given him no longer, he had waited, waited without bitter thought of her. She had made him, after their reconciliation, try to explain what he had felt to her, and he had done it, unwillingly, but not failing to answer her questions.

“You see it was like this, darling,” he had said. “I saw something was wrong, and I tried to find out if I had done anything, or how I could set things right. But it didn’t seem to me that I had altered at all—at least I knew I hadn’t—toward you, from the time that you said you loved me, and so the best thing I could do was just to keep on at that. I thought of all sorts of things, tried to wonder at your reasons for not being pleased with me. But that was no use: I’d always been myself to you, and—and I thought you might care for me again later on. Of course—I suppose it was in a selfish way—I was glad when poor old Jim made such a mistake, because that gave me an opportunity, you see, to—well, treat him decently. Not that I ever thought it would get to your ears. However, it did: Jim was a trump over that, going and telling you. I didn’t mean him to, but when it happened like that, I couldn’t help being pleased. You had been a bit hard on me, you know: thank God you were, for it makes it better now that you are not. Lord, what a jaw!”

This was the outcome of her talk with him, but the “jaw” was punctuated by questions of hers. It was another Claude catechism. But this one was not funny, nor had Jim any part in it.

Yes: she had separated this man who loved her into packets: there was her mistake. First she had loved his beauty, and then had taken that for granted. Next she had felt growingly irritated with all in him that did not correspond to the particular little tricks of conversation and life in which she had been brought up. Then she had got accustomed to those sterling qualities which she had taken for granted from the first. And then had come “the little more,” and how much it was. He had but shown, in practical demonstration, that he was kind and brave and reliable, all that she had thought she had given him credit for at first. But the effect was immense: she fell in love, at first real sight, with his qualities.

That fused the whole: at last she was in love with the man, not with his face, not with his character taken by itself, but with him as a whole. That splendid body was his, his too were the greater splendours of character, and if his also were the things dealt with in the public Claude catechism, they were no longer rejected, they were no longer even accepted, they were welcomed and hugged. The reason for this was plain: it was Claude who said and did all that which was symbolized under the title of “handsome lady,” and since it was Claude, it was a thing to be kissed, though laughter came too. He was no longer packets: they were fused into one dear whole, the thought of which and the presence of which made her heart ache with tenderness.

And now, thinking of these things, she had a thirsty eye for the opening of the door, a thirsty ear for the sound of his foot in the passage outside. But she knew he would not come quite yet, for at tea some silly discussion had arisen between him and Jim as to whether it was possible to get (with a run) from the bottom of the terrace to the lake in twelve strides. Jim had been vehement on the impossibility of it, and though Claude cordially agreed that it was a feat of which Jim was pathetically incapable, he backed himself to do it for the sum of one shilling. Even now she could hear him running along the terrace below the window, and Jim’s voice counting the strides.

Dora got up and strolled on to her balcony. The last attempt had apparently been unsuccessful, for Claude was starting again, and next moment with great strides his long legs were taking him across the grass that sloped down to the lake. This time it looked as if he would easily succeed, for the sixth leap had taken him well beyond the half-distance. The eleventh took him within a couple of yards of the edge, and next moment Dora joined in the shout of laughter that came from Jim. For it had not apparently occurred to Claude what happened next, if you leap at top speed to the margin of a lake. But he knew now, as he vanished in a fountain of spray. It was the deep end of the lake too.

Jim had collapsed altogether on the ground by the time Claude swam to shore, and Dora was equally helpless on the balcony, but by the time the involuntary bather had wrung his clothes out, Jim had recovered sufficiently to find the shilling he had lost to him.

“Oh! it was cheap at the price,” he said. “I wish it had been a florin.”

Claude walked up the terrace to the house, leaving a trail of water on the paving stones, and in a moment his dressing room door opened with a crack, and a head and naked shoulder came round the corner.

“Darling! I’ve been making a fool of myself,” he said “I must change first, and then shall I come in to read to you?”

“Yes, do,” she said, still laughing. “I saw it. I thought I should have a fit. Can’t you do it again before you change? It was too heavenly.”

“Yes, if you wish,” said he. “But I shall have to put on my wet clothes again.”

She laughed again.

“No, there would be no ‘first fine careless rapture’ the second time,” she said.

“What’s that?” asked Claude.

“Nothing. Browning. Change, and then come and read to me.”

It was not long before he joined her, and seated himself on the floor by the side of the sofa where she lay, with his back against it. The book he was reading was “Esmond,” and that evening they came to the chapter in which Harry comes home, on December 29th, and goes to the service in Winchester Cathedral. And Claude read:

“‘She gave him her hand, her little fair hand: there was only her marriage ring on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of grief and estrangement had passed. They had never been separated.’”

Dora’s hand lay on her husband’s arm, and he felt a soft pressure of her fingers.

“Oh, Claude,” she said, “how nice! He was so faithful and patient, and it all came right.”

He let the book fall to the ground. As soon as she spoke he ceased to think of Esmond, and though Dora’s words referred to him, she was not thinking of him either.

“‘They had never been separated,’” she went on, still quoting, but still not thinking of the book. “They hadn’t really been separated, because their love was present all the time, but she had let it get covered up with irritation and impatience. Was it like that it happened?”

“I can’t remember,” he said, “indeed I cannot. Everything seems unreal that isn’t perfect.”

“And there is something more coming,” she said, “coming soon, perhaps in a few days now. So to-night, dear, let us talk a little instead of reading even that beautiful chapter. I am glad we got to it to-day. I like stopping just at those very words, and I want you to tell me just once, what really I know so well, that you feel as if we had never been separated, that you forgive all my stupidity and shallowness. I want to let it all pass from my mind for ever: to know that I needn’t ever reproach myself any more. I think I have learned my lesson: I do indeed. Just tell me, if you can, that you think I have!”

He had turned himself about as she spoke, and now instead of sitting he knelt by her side, she leaning on her elbow toward him. In the humility of the simple words, there was something exquisite to him, they flooded his heart with a tender protectiveness.

“Oh, my darling, you say that to me! Indeed, indeed, I never reproached you.”

Dora was still grave.

“I know that,” she said, “but I reproached myself. How could I help it? But, Claude, the sting has gone out of my self-reproach. I can’t help it: it has. You have to tell me, if you truly can, that I needn’t barb it again.”

He saw she wanted the direct answer.

“You need not,” he said. “And I think you cannot. You can’t make an old bruise ache again when it is well.”

“Then it has gone,” she said. “Pull me up, dear, with those strong hands.”

He raised her to her feet, and she clung to him a moment.

“Oh, Claude! it is getting near the best time of all,” she said. “Your mother once told me that to bear a child was the best thing God ever thought of for women. Oh dear! and she was so funny at tea. Dad said something about a foreman he had discharged with nine children and another coming, and she pulled him up. How beautifully laughter and the biggest things in the world go together. They don’t interfere with one another in the least.”

“Lord! and to think that once I used to believe you weren’t respectful enough to Dad and her,” said he.

“And you were quite right. I can laugh at them now I love them. It’s that which makes the difference.”

She strolled to the window.

“Let’s come out on the balcony for a little,” she said. “What an evening!”

The sun had set, but not long, and in the west a flash of molten red lay along the horizon. That melted into orange, which again faded into pale green. Higher up the sky was of velvet blue, and little wisps of feathery cloud flushed with rose colour were flecked over it. The stars were already lit, and some noble planet near to its setting flamed jewel-like in that green strip of sky. Already the colours were half withdrawn from the garden beds, but a hint of the flower presences came to them in the little fragrant breeze that fluttered moth-like in the stillness. Beyond lay the lake, screened from the glory of sunset by the tall clumps of rhododendrons on its far side, and in the shadow the water was dark and steel-like in tone. Birds still chuckled in the bushes, and from far away came the pulse of some hurrying train. And in the hush and quiet of the hour they spoke together of the dear event that was coming and would not be long delayed.

“So I wanted,” she said at last, “to clear everything off my mind which could make me look backward. I want nothing to exist for me except you and our love for each other. Even Dad and Mother must get a little dim. I can’t explain.”

“I think I understand very well,” said he.

“And you won’t be frightened for me, Claude?” she asked. “Yet I needn’t ask you. I saw what you were when mother was ill.”

He did not answer.

“What then, dear?” asked Dora.

“Well, it’s you, you see, now,” he said. “I can’t help it. But I’ll do my best.”

A week more passed quietly enough. Lady Austell arrived, and that somehow was the last straw for Uncle Alf, for she was so extraordinarily appropriate, and he persuaded Jim to come back to Richmond with him. Lady Austell had very thoughtfully let the house at Deal most advantageously for the whole month of September, and intended to have a nice long stay at Grote. Really it was quite too wonderful that Dora’s baby should be born at Grote. It was a clear case of special Providence.

Then came a day when the house was very still, and the hot hours passed with leaden foot. To Claude it seemed that the morning would never pass to noon, and when noon was over each hour the more seemed an eternity twice told. But just before sunset there was heard the cry of a child.

Later, he was allowed to see Dora for a moment, and in a cot by her bed, tiny and red and crumpled, lay that which had come into the world.

“Oh Claude!” she said softly, as he came up to her bed, “all three of us—you and your son and I.”

THE END

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GROSSET & DUNLAP’S

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DRAMATIZED NOVELS

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Original, sincere and courageous—often amusing—the kind that are making theatrical history.

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Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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TITLES SELECTED FROM

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Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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A FEW OF

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Great Books at Little Prices

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A summer haunt on an island in Casco Bay is the background for this romance. A beautiful woman, at discord with life, is brought to realize, by her new friends, that she may open the shutters of her soul to the blessed sunlight of joy by casting aside vanity and self love. A delicately humorous work with a lofty motive underlying it all.

An amusing story, opening at a fashionable Long Island resort, where a stately Englishwoman employs a forcible New England housekeeper to serve in her interesting home. How types so widely apart react on each others’ lives, all to ultimate good, makes a story both humorous and rich in sentiment.

At a Southern California resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blasÈ woman by this glimpse into a cheery life.

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Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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LOUIS TRACY’S

CAPTIVATING AND EXHILARATING ROMANCES

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The story of a shipwreck, a lovely girl who shipped stowaway fashion, a rascally captain, a fascinating young officer and thrilling adventure enroute to South America.

A story of love and the salt sea—of a helpless ship whirled into the hands of cannibal Fuegians—of desperate fighting and a tender romance. A story of extraordinary freshness.

A bit of parchment many, many years old, telling of a priceless ruby secreted in ruins far in the interior of Africa is the “message” found in the figurehead of an old vessel. A mystery develops which the reader will follow with breathless interest.

The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cut-off inhabitants and introduces the charming comedy of a man eloping with his own wife.

The never-to-be-forgotten events of 1857 form the background of this story. The hero who begins as lieutenant and ends as Major Malcolm, has as stirring a military career as the most jaded novel reader could wish. A powerful book.

The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars of the hiding of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. The glamour of mystery added to the romance of the lovers, gives the novel an interest that makes it impossible to leave until the end is reached.

A sort of Robinson Crusoe redivivus, with modern settings and a very pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of a wreck, and have adventures on their desert island such as never could have happened except in a story.

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Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS
IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

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Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

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A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest of old-fashioned love stories * * * A rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. A dainty volume, especially suitable for a gift.

How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, Doctor Luke is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of rare personality.

The London Morning Post says: “It would be hard to find better reading * * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end, that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till they have read the last—and the last is a veritable gem * * * contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain.

A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * an entertaining story of a man’s redemption through a woman’s love * * * no one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of every one who knows the meaning of “love” and “home.”

“Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling and romantic situations.” “So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the far-spreading desert of similar romances.”—Gazette-Times, Pittsburg. “A slap-dashing day romance.”—New York Sun.

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GROSSET & DUNLAP,-NEW YORK

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FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS
IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

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The standards and life of “the new navy” are breezily set forth with a genuine ring impossible from the most gifted “outsider.” “The story of the destruction of the ‘Maine,’ and of the Battle of Manila, are very dramatic. The author is the daughter of one naval officer and the wife of another. Naval folks will find much to interest them in ‘The Spirit of the Service.’”—The Book Buyer.

Miss Murfree has pictured Tennessee mountains and the mountain people in striking colors and with dramatic vividness, but goes back to the time of the struggles of the French and English in the early eighteenth century for possession of the Cherokee territory. The story abounds in adventure, mystery, peril and suspense.

A war story; but more of flirtation, love and courtship than of fighting or history. The tale is thoroughly readable and takes its readers again into golden Tennessee, into the atmosphere which has distinguished all of Miss Murfree’s novels.

As a penalty for her crimes, her evil nature, her flint-like callousness, her more than inhuman cruelty, her contempt for the laws of God and man, she was condemned to bury her magnificent personality, her transcendent beauty, her superhuman charms, in gilded obscurity at a King’s left hand. A powerful story powerfully told.

A thoroughly good story that keeps you guessing to the very end, and never attempts to instruct or reform you. It is a strictly up-to-date story of love and mystery with wireless telegraphy and all the modern improvements. The events nearly all take place on a big Atlantic liner and the romance of the deep is skilfully made to serve as a setting for the romance, old as mankind, yet always new, involving our hero.

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GROSSET & DUNLAP,-NEW YORK

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A FEW OF

GROSSET & DUNLAP’S

Great Books at Little Prices

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This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has well portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences in endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained to an appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in the rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit of fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The play in which David Warfield scored his highest success.

Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales that this volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable doctor is more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies and tragedies of the old village are told with dramatic charm.

Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people in a sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable “preacher,” is the connecting link between these dramatic stories from life.

The hero is a farmer—a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness of enemies.

Against the historical background of the days when the children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has sketched a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great as any since “Ben Hur.”

The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod Agrippa and the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the mighty figures that move through the pages. Wonderful descriptions, and a love story of the purest and noblest type mark this most remarkable religious romance.

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Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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THE MASTERLY AND REALISTIC NOVELS OF

FRANK NORRIS

Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents per volume, postpaid.

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THE OCTOPUS. A Story of California.

Mr. Norris conceived the ambitious idea of writing a trilogy of novels which, taken together, shall symbolize American life as a whole, with all its hopes and aspirations and its tendencies, throughout the length and breadth of the continent. And for the central symbol he has taken wheat, as being quite literally the ultimate source of American power and prosperity. The Octopus is a story of wheat raising and railroad greed in California. It immediately made a place for itself.

It is full of enthusiasm and poetry and conscious strength. One cannot read it without a responsive thrill of sympathy for the earnestness, the breadth of purpose, the verbal power of the man.

THE PIT. A Story of Chicago.

This powerful novel is the fictitious narrative of a deal in the Chicago wheat pit and holds the reader from the beginning. In a masterly way the author has grasped the essential spirit of the great city by the lakes. The social existence, the gambling in stocks and produce, the characteristic life in Chicago, form a background for an exceedingly vigorous and human tale of modern life and love.

A MAN’S WOMAN.

A story which has for a heroine a girl decidedly out of the ordinary run of fiction. It is most dramatic, containing some tremendous pictures of the daring of the men who are trying to reach the Pole * * * but it is at the same time essentially a woman’s book, and the story works itself out in the solution of a difficulty that is continually presented in real life—the wife’s attitude in relation to her husband when both have well-defined careers.

McTEAGUE. A Story of San Francisco.

“Since Bret Harte and the Forty-niner no one has written of California life with the vigor and accuracy of Mr. Norris. His ‘McTeague’ settled his right to a place in American literature; and he has now presented a third novel, ‘Blix,’ which is in some respects the finest and likely to be the most popular of the three.”—Washington Times.

BLIX.

“Frank Norris has written in ‘Blix’ just what such a woman’s name would imply—a story of a frank, fearless girl comrade to all men who are true and honest because she is true and honest. How she saved the man she fishes and picnics with in a spirit of outdoor platonic friendship, makes a pleasant story, and a perfect contrast to the author’s ‘McTeague.’ A splendid and successful story.”—Washington Times.

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GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, — New York

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