LINGO DAN 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCIVAL POLLARD 
 
 Author of ' ' The Imitator, " " Cape of Storms, 
 ' 'Dreams of Today, ' ' Etc. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 431 ELEVENTH STREET 
 MCMIII 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY PERCIVAL POLLARD 
 
This book is dedicated to Ambrose Bierce, Lingo 
 Dan's first friend. 
 
 P. P. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lingodannovelOOpoll 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Lest this book perturb too mightily some 
 of our Gaboriaus of criticism, let me set down 
 here the fact that my hero and his companion 
 were first introduced to the world by me in 
 1894 through the San Francisco Argonaut. 
 A judge, more given to austerity than leni- 
 ency, saw fit to remark that Lingo Dan was 
 a new type in American fiction. In that be- 
 lief I still venture to continue, despite the 
 fact that he has, since first quietly making 
 his bow, had many rivals more conspicuous 
 than himself in the line of thought and con- 
 duct he adorns. If it be objected against me 
 that I have delayed nearly ten years in thus 
 continuing the chronicle begun in 1894, I 
 retort that even this has taken a deal of tem- 
 erity; my gentleman is still alive, and there 
 is no knowing what form his reproaches for 
 these indiscretions of mine may take. 
 
 P. P. 
 
 Washington, 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I In Which An Important Duet is Introduced 
 
 Without Any Ceremony 9 
 
 II In Which the Dignity of Honest Labor and 
 
 Cheque Books is Eloquently Set Forth. . 24 
 
 III Which Exposes Some of the Vicissitudes 
 
 That May Befall a Country Sheriff 40 
 
 IV In Which There is a Meeting of Two Em- 
 
 perors, and in Which the Stars and 
 Stripes are Waved — and Saved 56 
 
 V Telling of Some Rifle Bullets and the In- 
 
 vention of a Somewhat Splendid Lie 87 
 
 VI In Which it is Shown How One May Enter 
 
 Society Without Being Introduced 99 
 
 VII From Which it Would Appear That Ducks 
 
 May be Preferable to Ducats 115 
 
 VIII Which Dwells Upon Lingo Dan's Method 
 
 of Beautifying the Suburbs 137 
 
 IX Concerning Murder and Some Speculation 
 
 in Comedy 149 
 
 X In Which There is a Glimpse of Arcady. .. . 163 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT DUET IS INTRODUCED 
 WITHOUT ANY CEREMONY 
 
 The snow that lined the sides of what the 
 railroad men of that section called the "Brigh- 
 ton Cut" was, fortunately for two persons who 
 suddenly found themselves transported from 
 the cold hospitality of a freight-car to the cold- 
 er embraces of the wide, white world that en- 
 compassed the track, very deep. After a mo- 
 ment or two of partial insensibility, more the 
 result of bewilderment than of actual physical 
 hurt, these two li rted their heads up out of the 
 white counterpane that clung to them like some 
 active envelope, and looked after the train that 
 was now merely a mist of smoke and an echo 
 faint beyond the curves of the forest. 
 
 "H'm," said the first one of the two derelicts 
 to rise and shake the snow off his thin form, 
 "that was a fearful breach of hospitality. We 
 invest a common carrier, so termed in law, 
 with the dignity of carrying such uncommon 
 personages as ourselves, and this — this is the 
 treatment we receive! Billy, this is a heathen 
 country !" He took off his cap and passed eight 
 
IO 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 long and bony fingers through his snow-invest- 
 ed hair. 
 
 "Damn his eyes !" said Billy. He was a per- 
 son of few words, and fewer attractions. He 
 was short, and his general effect was toward 
 the loutish. 
 
 "Yes," the other replied, looking about him, 
 "I have no doubt you are right. Billy, your 
 explanation is a most agreeable one. It was 
 owing to some curious defect in that brake- 
 man's eyes, doubtless, that he failed to notice 
 our high estate ; if any part of him is to suffer 
 condemnation, it is his eyes. Billy, I agree with 
 you ; say it again !" 
 
 Billy, for a brief minute, looked as if he 
 would like to include other and nearer eyes in 
 his anathema. He contented himself, however, 
 with a muttered "Argh !" a circular look at the 
 prospect of sloping meadow-land, and a "What 
 next, cully?" 
 
 "Stranded as we are upon an apparently 
 shoreless sea of snow," responded the gentle- 
 man addressed, "our next move should be to- 
 ward shelter." He paused to kick some snow 
 out of a boot that was, as to the toes, over-hos- 
 pitable to the elements. "This is a dismal spot !" 
 
 To tell the truth, the "Brighton Cut" is one 
 of the bleakest places in the State. The railway 
 track comes winding down a steep grade until 
 it reaches this cut; the soil thereabouts is not 
 tillable, and there are no fences for over half a 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 1 1 
 
 mile. A thin strip of forest shuts out the west- 
 ern view. On a gray afternoon in midwinter 
 it looks very lonely, and there is something in 
 the silence of it, after the rattle of a freight- 
 train has echoed away, that strikes a chill even 
 when the sun is shining. It was no wonder, 
 then, that to these two, just stranded there 
 from the comparatively warm recesses of a 
 lumber-car, the place should seem decidedly 
 dismal. They w r ere used to dismal things, to 
 be sure; but that ever-present yearning for 
 luxury and its attendant inexertion — a yearn- 
 ing that had made them what they were — re- 
 belled at every repetition of the unwelcome 
 reality. It is not necessary to state very par- 
 ticularly who these two were. The one with 
 the tall frame and the taller language might 
 have been a great many things, some of them 
 great; the fact that he was none of these is ex- 
 planation enough for his title as a tramp. As for 
 the other one, it is doubtful whether he had ever 
 had even possibilities; he was, by lapse of all 
 other capabilities, a tramp for sure. Just as it 
 is sufficient of a man to say that he is a king, 
 so it is enough, introduction to make certain 
 that he is a tramp. These two were indubitably 
 tramps. It was evident in the consummate 
 grace with which 1hey wore their curiously al- 
 lotted clothes. I: was patent in the air of no- 
 bility that stamped them as true lords of the 
 air. It was on their breath. 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 "I may say, without exaggeration," contin- 
 ued the taller of the two, "that this is a place 
 unfit for such as we are to rest in. Wherefore, 
 let us reconnoitre." 
 
 As they passed up the slope toward the north 
 it began to snow steadily. Over in the west, 
 the faint, gray light of day was dimming to 
 the almost colorless shade of white upon white. 
 It was an arduous task, stamping through the 
 drifting snow. From time to time one might 
 have heard, had one been within earshot, the 
 voice of Billy, cursing as he walked. 
 
 * sf: sjs Jfi jjs jjj Jfc $ 
 
 On what is known in that county as the 
 Brighton Mill Road, there is, for the most part, 
 a sprinkling of as fine farms as there are any- 
 where in the West. The farm-houses are well- 
 painted, and the barns are roomy and new 
 enough to be the envy of many a man who has 
 gone further toward the plains and rented a log 
 cabin. For a distance of about a mile, east and 
 west, however, this highway passes through a 
 barren district that is marked by nothing save 
 a tumble-down shanty, with a roof the bricks 
 of which have fallen eastward. This shanty 
 stands at a point where the highway is nearest 
 to that point on the railway known as the 
 "Brighton Cut," on the summit of the arid 
 slope leading down to the rails. For a good 
 many years this shanty had been the home, if 
 one may use the word so lightly, of a certain 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 13 
 
 Doc Midclals, concerning whom but little seem- 
 ed to be known, save that he was "baching it." 
 Just what presumption of ownership or inter- 
 est in the shanty or its surroundings went with 
 Middals's system of occupation there seemed 
 to be no one willing to testify. This Doc Mid- 
 dais was a queer fellow who rarely spent more 
 than a month or two at a time in the shanty, 
 and his goings and comings were so erratic, 
 his place so remote from the view of other 
 habitations, that the question of his presence 
 or absence was always an open one. The farm- 
 ers who passed on the highway had long since 
 given up speculating on the subject; Middals 
 frequently denied himself a fire even in mid- 
 winter, so not even the absence of smoke about 
 the shattered chimney was proof positive of the 
 man's presence elsewhere. 
 
 It was in this cottage that Lingo Dan — by 
 this sobriquet was the taller of the two tramps, 
 who had been lately deposited in the "Brighton 
 Cut" by an inhospitable brakeman, known in 
 such circles as knew him at all intimately — and 
 his partner Billy were housed about a week 
 after their advent in that part of the country. 
 By a marvelous, instinctive faculty of penetra- 
 tion, of stilling his own curiosity, Lingo Dan 
 had fully possessed himself of all the facts in 
 connection with that shanty before he en- 
 tered it. 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 Covered by the drifting of the snow, the pres- 
 ence of these two was absolutely unknown to a 
 soul. In the driving storm that followed their 
 arrival like a wail of omen, all their tracks 
 through the snow had been obliterated. 
 
 Looking out of the eastern window of the 
 Middals shanty, Lingo Dan gave a sigh of ad- 
 miration. The sun was making a million dia- 
 monds dance about the crust of snow that 
 stretched away over the fields and on the high- 
 way; it was like a rollicking cowboy shooting 
 until his victims dance for dear life. Clear as 
 crystal, the air was intensely sensitive to tone; 
 a far-off ringing cf sleigh-bells sounded with a 
 distinctness that belied distance. Out of the 
 blue of the sky, the glitter of the sun, and the 
 fierce purity of the snow, there arose a splendid 
 dazzlement that blinded unaccustomed eyes. 
 
 "It would be pathetic," mused Lingo Dan 
 aloud, after passing his hand over his eyes to 
 shut out the glare that began to hurt him. "if 
 we should find our opportunity on such a day. 
 Look, Billy, what a day it is ! H'm, I had not 
 thought this country capable of so magnificent 
 an effect. And yet, do you know, I think it is 
 going to snow again before night." 
 
 Billy offered no reply. He was engaged in 
 cleaning out a rifle, and at intervals he contort- 
 ed his face into a squint so that he might 
 gauge the nicety of the barrel's internal polish. 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 15 
 
 "When I come to consider the matter," Lin- 
 go Dan went on, "I begin to regret my harsh 
 words anent that brakeman. He was, as I now 
 see it, an instrument of a benign providence. 
 Providence is, indeed, singularly benign. What 
 could be handier to our purpose than this cot- 
 tage and its associations ? Occupied by a harm- 
 less hermit, it takes on all the innocuousness 
 possible. Benign providence ! This man Mid- 
 dais is absent, leaving us his shanty and his 
 shooting irons. Benign providence! I feel it 
 in my veins, now tingling with the excitation 
 so beautiful a day has put me in, that there 
 will presently come some one whose necessity is 
 not so great as ours. In the interests of liberty 
 and equality, we must relieve his person of its 
 valuables ere we release him. I trust he will 
 not resist. I sincerely trust so. But if he does 
 
 " He looked at Billy's employment. "Is 
 
 it clean?" 
 
 "Slick as grease," was Billy's answer. 
 "Benign providence!" 
 
 It was as if in response to Lingo Dan's de- 
 vout utterance that the eastern hilltop became 
 at this moment slightly clouded with a fine 
 powdery mist. Then the forms of two persons 
 on horseback appeared upon the slope; it was 
 evident that their ascent of the farther side had 
 been accomplished at a canter. Even at that 
 distance, so clear was the day, the breath of the 
 horses' nostrils could be seen rising about them 
 
i6 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 like a halo. At the first sight of them, Lingo 
 Dan, smiling unctuously, said : "Ah, Billy, our 
 prey approaches." 
 "One?" 
 
 "No ; there are two of them. They are rid- 
 ing. One is a man ; the other, a woman. They 
 are young. Judging by their present loitering- 
 and the interest each exhibits in the other, I 
 should say they were lovers." 
 
 "No good — they ain't !" Billy gave the rifle 
 a last vicious wipe, and laid it upon a shelf. 
 
 "Haste, my boy, is a dangerous indulgence. 
 I beg to differ; I think we are in particularly 
 good luck. Such slight observance of the ways 
 of my kind as I have been able to take has 
 taught me that in certain walks of life a young 
 man never permits himself the company of a 
 young lady without being sure that he has 
 money in his pocket. Yonder young man is of 
 that walk in life. There are, you see, so many 
 possibilities, such contingencies, that to pro- 
 vide one's self with money before providing 
 one's self with a companion is merely to prove 
 one's appreciation of the world we live in; this 
 applies to a ride of an hour as well as to a 
 marriage for life." 
 
 Billy was apparently used to such lengthy 
 philosophies, for he replied, as if unconscious 
 of the other's wordy efforts : "Say ! How 
 about getting away?" 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 17 
 
 "Easy — ridiculously easy. After obtaining 
 the reward of our exertions, we drift gently 
 down the slope to the railway, and presently, 
 boarding a freight, turn our faces to the Gold- 
 en West. I have observed a ledge of rock from 
 which we can easily propel ourselves on to the 
 moving cars while the train is toiling up the 
 steep grade of the cut. We will not be found — 
 if we ever are — until many miles have been 
 traversed ; an alibi will be complete." 
 
 "But our tracks from here to the cut?" 
 
 "Billy, you are singularly slow. Do you see 
 that cloud on the horizon ? Before night it will 
 snow; our foot-marks will be utterly wiped 
 out." 
 
 Billy considered a moment. Then he said, 
 triumphantly: "But the impressions will 
 harden this surface ; they'll get on to us if ever 
 they sweep away the new fall of snow." 
 
 Lingo Dan shrugged his shoulders. "Whence 
 the inspiration of that remark, I know not. I 
 think you must have been reading Conan 
 Doyle. Well, you can be quite sure that there 
 is no Sherlock Holmes in this part of the coun- 
 try. Dear me !" 
 
 At this last exclamation Billy looked curious. 
 "What's up?" he asked. 
 
 For an instant or two Lingo Dan made no 
 reply. He was looking intently at the high- 
 way on which the two riders were approach- 
 ing. In point of fact, the occurrence that at- 
 
18 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 tracted his attention was singular enough. As 
 they rode slowly, side by side, down the slope 
 of the road that came to the shanty from the 
 east, the young man's left arm slowly disen- 
 gaged itself from the reins of his horse and 
 passed behind the waist of his human compan- 
 ion; their bodies and their heads came gently, 
 carefully together; the girl's hand went up to 
 her chin, detaching the veil and relegating it 
 to her forehead, and then her arm encircled the 
 young man; their faces met in a kiss. The 
 horses' heads hung down and their feet ambled 
 leisurely; tired after their hill-climbing canter, 
 they took this respite thankfully enough. It 
 was a kiss that lasted longer than do most 
 kisses; the adventurous circumstances and the 
 perilous nature of their position tended to fill 
 both these riders with the advisability of mak- 
 ing the most of bliss ; to them, the kiss was but 
 an infinitesimal instant of happiness; to any 
 one not concerned in it, its length would have 
 seemed an eternity. All these things the 
 watcher in the cottage observed. 
 
 "It is evident," he said, presently, "that this 
 is no ordinary case. They are lovers, but they 
 are also more : they are eloping. This compli- 
 cates matters. It makes our booty greater, but 
 it increases the — h'm — the difficulty. Yes, I 
 am afraid this will be a — what did we say in 
 the Quadrangle? — a mauvais quart d'heure" 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 19 
 
 "What're you drivin' at?" Billy glowered 
 at his companion in evident disgust at his high- 
 flown phrases. 
 
 "My dear Billy, here are the facts : Two 
 persons, when they elope, are preparing for a 
 future ; hence, the young man lines his pockets 
 before he starts. He lines his pockets, however, 
 both from without and within. Realizing the 
 risk he is running, he puts pistols in his hip- 
 pockets, as well as a purse over his breast." 
 
 "I reckon that's likely." 
 
 "Thank you. Your acquiescence, Billy, 
 soothes a spirit slightly ruffled by the prospect 
 of discourtesy. For, to tell the truth, I fear we 
 shall have to — h'm — silence these two first, and 
 inquire afterward. It would be so infernally 
 unpleasant, you see, if he got the drop on us. 
 Understand, then, that we are not to take risks. 
 You, Billy, will sight for the girl; I'll take the 
 man." 
 
 There was a click as Billy sent the hammer 
 of his rifle to the full-cock. Lingo Dan stretch- 
 ed out his long arm, picked up the other 
 weapon and rested the barrel carefully on the 
 window-sill. 
 
 The riders were quite close to the house, and 
 the love in the eyes of each shone out with a 
 sort of spiritual brilliance. They leaned to- 
 gether again and joined lips in a long, delicious 
 kiss. 
 
20 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 And while they kissed, two shots rang out on 
 the crystal air. 
 
 An old woman living on the outskirts of 
 Libertytown rejoices in the peculiar sobriquet 
 of Mrs. Early Worm. This is, one can only 
 suppose, due to her habit of rising at a most 
 infinitesimal hour, in midwinter as well as in 
 midsummer. As to her reasons for this singu- 
 lar course, there is nothing but conjecture. She 
 is said to have driven her husband to an early 
 grave, and then, overcome by remorse, to have 
 sworn to seek none but an early grave herself. 
 However that may be, the things that Mrs. 
 Early Worm saw on the morning of the twen- 
 tieth of February, 189-, are facts, and have 
 nothing to do with the realm of conjecture. 
 
 When she arose, the world was still, in spite 
 of its coating of snow, very dark. There was 
 light, to be sure, of that curious, indefinite 
 gray that distinguishes the birth of a day in 
 winter time. She was proceeding to the wood- 
 shed to pick up the usual armful of kindling- 
 wood for the kitchen stove, when suddenly she 
 said, "Land sakes, what is that?" and stood 
 stock-still in the middle of the yard. 
 
 What she saw was this : Through the gray 
 dawn light that hung between the earth's white 
 coverlet and the night's flying wings of sable, 
 there approached the apparition of two horses 
 and two riders. In the gray haze they shone 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 21 
 
 like angels of whiteness; that was the awful 
 part of it — they were all white! Against the 
 horizon, where night still held sway, their 
 forms were cut as clearly as in ivory. As they 
 came nearer, the old woman, shivering now 
 with cold and fear, observed that one rider was 
 a man, the other, a girl. They sat motionless, 
 rigid, as if carved of marble. They were cov- 
 ered with frost from head to foot; they were 
 white with the hue of cold. The horses, as 
 they stepped rhythmically forward, blew out 
 mists of steam that came back to them frozen 
 coatings of ice. 
 
 The old woman, with an effort, found energy 
 enough to wrench herself out of the strange, 
 lethargic fascination she had been in. She be- 
 gan to run, as fast as her old legs could carry 
 her, toward the nearest house, about a hundred 
 yards away. 
 
 Presently the entire village was aroused to 
 the presence of this ghastly phenomenon. 
 
 Heedless of the terror they occasioned, the 
 horses stepped on with a tired and even gait. 
 
 And now it was observed that the riders were 
 linked together, that the two were one, that 
 here was some awful unity of horror. Their 
 arms were intertwined, their faces touching. 
 The man's right hand held his horse's reins and 
 a hunting-crop, while his left was about the 
 girl's waist ; her right was about his shoulders, 
 and her left held the reins. Their shoulders 
 
22 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 touched ; it was as if they were hewn out of one 
 stone. 
 
 But there was no breath from their nostrils. 
 White as ghosts, still as eternity, they rode on 
 into the heart of the village. 
 
 Numb with dread, no one dared approach 
 them. All knew their faces well ; no one spoke 
 their names; even curiosity was stifled in the 
 greatness of their terror. 
 
 With the resonant clamor of iron shoes upon 
 wood, both horses ascended the slight sloping 
 entrance to the livery barn. Roused by the 
 sound, the livery man came out of his office. 
 He looked, in dazed astonishment, at these col- 
 orless, silent, motionless riders, he noticed what 
 no one had yet seen : upon the breast of each a 
 crimson stain, not quite hidden by the coat- 
 ing of frost. 
 
 "Great God!" he said; "they're stone dead!" 
 
 ******** 
 
 The sun, shimmering through the planks of 
 a lumber-car, part of a freight-train traveling 
 through the farther West, rested for an instant 
 on the eyes of Lingo Dan as he slept the sleep 
 of the careless. Its radiance woke him; he 
 rubbed his eyes, gave Billy a nudge with his el- 
 bow, and said: "Hello, Billy; here we are 
 again !" 
 
 "Oh," grunted Billy, viciously, "you be 
 d d!" 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 23 
 
 "I admit it, Billy; I probably shall be. What 
 for? For gross incompetence in judging the 
 idiocy of a man in love. For, I leave it to any 
 one, is it conceivable that any one but a luna- 
 tic would start upon a voyage for life, with a 
 life-companion, without a sou in his pocket? A 
 lunatic, Billy, is, as I now see, a simile for a 
 man in love. Billy, when I was at college I 
 played tennis ; in tennis, love means nothing. It 
 is the same here. Let us go to sleep again. 
 Great Greeley! — without a sou — without a 
 souT 
 
 Turning over, they went to sleep again. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IN WHICH THE DIGNITY OF HONEST LABOR AND 
 CHEQUE BOOKS IS ELOQUENTLY 
 SET FORTH 
 
 To the sound of the rattling husks being 
 pulled from the yellow maize came the voice 
 of Lingo Dan. 
 
 "It is passing wonderful/' he said, "what a 
 fascination your industry has for me, Billy! 
 There is something so rare, so unusual, so bi- 
 zarre, about it ! Indeed, this past month or so 
 — how quaint our lives have been. We have 
 been engaged in honest toil " 
 
 "You, eh?" Billy grunted, and stuffed some 
 husks into a sack so viciously that the sharp 
 edges of the dry leaves cut his hand like a knife. 
 "Yes, you have — like Hell!" He wiped the 
 scarred hand across his hair. 
 
 "My good Billy, you forget the ethic basis 
 of the division of labor. It is true that yours 
 has been of the hands — here is a handkerchief, 
 Billy, to bind over that somewhat unsightly 
 cut; a kerchief washed by Miss Molly's own 
 fair hands, I dare say — while mine has been of 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 25 
 
 the head. I have been planning our deliver- 
 ance, Billy. Do you think these elaborations 
 come to me of their own accord? You judge 
 me too highly." He stretched his legs out at 
 full length, and, his hands clasped behind his 
 head, stared out through a chink of the log- 
 built crib. He sighed. From without came 
 the monotonous buzzing of the cotton gin. 
 "Why is it, Billy," he went on, "that we can 
 not find contentment in these peaceful ways of 
 life? Think, Billy — to watch the white fluffs 
 of cotton blossoming on one's own land; to 
 hear the wind whispering in the aisles of one's 
 own cornfield ; to feel that just so much of fair 
 fresh air and sunshine was one's own — were it 
 not pleasant? — I beg your pardon? Oh — 
 really, Billy, your language is scarce academic. 
 But you are right — we hardly seem the proper 
 figures for that setting. We lack some atom of 
 the elemental human ; we are the victims of our 
 versatilities." For a time there was no sound 
 save that of the savage ripping with which 
 Billy denuded the ears of corn. Then the other 
 spoke again, in a voice from which the abstract 
 and the dreamy was suddenly absent. "You 
 are sure we were not noticed that Sunday ?" 
 "Sure !" said Billy. 
 
 "And that you have your part of the busi- 
 ness well in mind?" 
 "Dead easy." 
 
26 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 "Then it becomes merely a question as to 
 how soon that coquette, Opportunity, chooses 
 to beckon to us. Hush a moment, Billy ! Yes, 
 our friend, the Deacon, approaches." 
 
 Billy handed over a sack that was half full 
 of the corn shucks. When the farmer whose 
 hired men these two were, opened the door of 
 the crib and called them to dinner, Lingo Dan 
 was husking the one ear of corn that had en- 
 gaged his attention that day. 
 
 When his daughter Mollie was setting the 
 table for supper that evening, Sam Travis, fa- 
 miliar to the fellow members of his church as 
 Deacon Travis, came in from the kitchen 
 chuckling to himself. "Been a'figuring things 
 out," he said, "and dinged if the two of 'em's 
 done a speck more'n one man's work o' shuck- 
 ing that there corn! One man's work — and 
 we feeds the two of 'em. But the fact is I sort 
 er reckin listening to the tall cuss is as good as 
 reading a magazine. Ever know sech a gift o' 
 gab, Mollie?" 
 
 "No. But he never learnt it on a farm!" 
 
 "That's right, too, Moll; but I ain't a'going 
 to make no man's past lead me to the sin of 
 curiosity, Moll — leastwise not in Texas. 
 Ah — h ! Wish your mother was alive to smell 
 that cornbread o' yours, Moll !" 
 
 Molly smiled with pleasure. But as the 
 others came in, and while she moved about 
 serving the dishes, her face took on lines of 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 2 7 
 
 pain. Presently her father noticed that she 
 was making the merest pretence of eating. 
 "Ain't you well, Moll ?" he asked. 
 
 "One o' my headaches, dad," was the girl's 
 answer. 
 
 "Too bad! An' to-morrow Sunday! The 
 first Sunday 'the month; an' me not there to 
 pass the plate !" Deacon Travis passed his cup 
 for more tea, and sighed sadly. 
 
 "I'm sorry, dad. Can't you go without me?" 
 
 "No — sir ! Not much ! Got to see to your 
 having camphor on your forehead right 
 along." 
 
 There was a coughing noise from Lingo 
 Dan. "If you really find yourself unable to go, 
 would it be asking too much, might the buggy 
 be allowed to take my companion and myself to 
 holy worship? It is — not often," he paused 
 and smiled wistfully at the Deacon, "that we 
 have a chance." 
 
 Deacon Travis looked pleased. "Sure thing, 
 you can have the team. Never thought you 
 was given to churchgoing ; might 'er asked you 
 before. Sure you know the way?" 
 
 "Perfectly; it is very kind of you." 
 
 When they were alone with each other once 
 more, Deacon Travis remarked to his daughter 
 that it was perhaps a sort of special Providence 
 that had given her a headache, so that two 
 thirsty souls might have an opportunity to 
 drink of the spiritual waters of the Word. 
 
28 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 Which philosophic point of view, however, was 
 not completely cheering to Miss Mollie herself. 
 
 The little frame church, where the farmers 
 of that region are wont to congregrate every 
 Sunday, stands on a slight lift of the prairie, 
 where a narrow cross road leaves the North 
 Road for the mountains. Nowhere else in the 
 world would these hills be termed mountains ; 
 but here, contrasting vividly enough with the 
 monotonous level of the prairie, they seem 
 somehow, to merit the title easily enough. 
 Cedar-clad, these mountains make the horizon, 
 at one point of the compass at least, green and 
 fresh and picturesque. In the hot days, that are 
 the rule in Texas, the shade of these cedars be- 
 comes a veritable oasis for travelers whose road 
 takes them in that direction. 
 
 And it may be possible that many of the good 
 farm folk being driven churchward that bright, 
 torrid Sunday morning, would have preferred, 
 in their heart of hearts, the cool of the cedar 
 mountains to the hot church benches. Still, if 
 such thoughts came to them while the white 
 dust skurried with and behind their wheels, 
 they put them away again as speedily as possi- 
 ble. They felt that they had every right to be 
 proud of having a church at all. There were 
 communities, in the same county, and not such 
 a vast distance away, either, that were as god- 
 less as they were unprosperous. To feel that 
 their own congregation was one made up of 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 29 
 
 well-to-do folk, and to drive through the fields 
 that showed such bountiful harvests was to 
 be glad., also, that they had had the grace, years 
 ago, to call to them a clergyman from the East, 
 to build a church, to support it in every fitting, 
 and, frequently, many a magnificent way. Good 
 fortune, or good judgment, had ordained that 
 the Rev. Martin Dawson prove himself exactly 
 the best pastor in the world for that commu- 
 nity. He was an oldish man, not too much the 
 doctrinarian, a pleasant companion personally, 
 and popular not only with the members of his 
 congregation, but with the Eastern folk he had 
 left when coming to Texas. His popularity, 
 and the pleasant manner of his life reacted hap- 
 pily upon his congregation in another direction. 
 After his old college chum, the Rev. James 
 Langan, had paid him a visit some years ago, 
 such glowing reports had been taken back East 
 that thereafter this little Texas farm commu- 
 nity had constantly the advantage of hearing 
 many really admirable preachers in their little 
 church. When their good pastor arose as the 
 services opened, and introduced to them his 
 "brother in the Lord'' from say Hartford, and 
 there followed a sermon as elequent as occurs 
 in the towns only where the pew rents are based 
 on such incomes as millionaires have, these 
 good people were no longer surprised. They 
 listened, with interest and gratitude, and 
 thanked fortune once more for giving them 
 
3Q 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 such a pastor. As for the visiting clergymen, 
 such visits to their old friend Dawson were by 
 way of holiday. That none of these visitors 
 were the kind that might attempt any discourse 
 tinctured with indoor rather than outdoor the- 
 ology, was a point rigorously watched by Mr. 
 Dawson. 
 
 The Rev. Martin Dawson was a bachelor. 
 Alone with an old servant, who now acted as 
 sexton, verger and church warden rolled into 
 one, he lived in a small house some two miles 
 from the church, on the road that eventually 
 passed Sam Travis' farm. Every Sunday 
 morning these two old people betook them- 
 selves with surplice and sermon into the little 
 road wagon, and allowed a lazy, easy-going 
 grey mare to convey them leisurely to church. 
 Then followed the duties of the day; the min- 
 ister prayed and preached, his servant took up 
 the collection. There were some moments in 
 which the minister, his surplice laid aside, chat- 
 ted cheerily with the members of his congre- 
 gation, refusing, perhaps, many an invitation 
 to dinner, and then home again, behind the 
 grey mare to convey them leisurely to church. 
 Frequently, to be sure, there was the clerical 
 visitor also ; and once or twice it had happened 
 that the visitor had come alone with the old 
 servant, the Rev. Dawson being heir to a gout 
 that, at times, took him quite off his feet. 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 31 
 
 As the many vehicle of various shapes and 
 capacities came bowling along the dusty roads 
 that approached the church from the different 
 points of the compass, one young farmer with 
 sharper eyes than most people have, identified 
 a buggy that was coming at right angles to his 
 own. 
 
 'There's the Travis rig," he remarked to his 
 wife. 
 
 "Mollie's been promising me a recipe for 
 putting up Alexandrias ; I hope to goodness she 
 ain't forgot it today." 
 
 "I reckon," he went on, "you'll have to wait 
 for that recipe. It's the Travis rig, but it ain't 
 the folks. Looks more like some of parson's 
 friends." 
 
 "Shaw — I'm sorry ! One of Moll's head- 
 aches, I guess." And they drove on, joggeclly. 
 
 In the Travis buggy, Lingo Dan was dis- 
 coursing on the curious inconsistencies in hu- 
 man nature. 
 
 "A dear old soul, that parson ! Eh, Billy — 
 a dear old soul! But only human, after all. 
 No strength of spiritual warp can break the 
 bonds imposed by such coarse creature things 
 as — as ourselves. I hardly think it likely he 
 can break that rope unaided. And as for the 
 partner of the righteous household, I believe 
 you corded him up pretty securely, didn't you, 
 Billy? Yes, I think we may be sure they are 
 safely fettered for a while. Quite allegorical, 
 
32 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 this act of ours, Billy ; do you not note the al- 
 legory? The fetters of the flesh — fetters of the 
 flesh; if your education, Billy, had not been 
 shamefully neglected, you would find many a 
 Sunday school memory in that dear old phrase : 
 The fetters of the flesh. In a measure I regret 
 that force was necessary. A crude thing, after 
 all, is force. If one had been able to obtain 
 their promises, their holy oaths — how much 
 finer, how much more of the age of Honor! 
 But that — that was impossible. A dear old 
 soul! But short in his breath — very short! 
 And then the inconsistency of him — did you 
 note that ? While he thought we merely came 
 for common robbery, he seemed to feel little, 
 save, perhaps regret for our misguided ways ; 
 but the instant I laid hands on his sermon and 
 his surplice — Olympus, that was a mighty 
 rage, eh, Billy! I was glad I had him bound 
 by that time; had he been free just then, his 
 rage — there is no telling what the dear old soul 
 might not have done. A wonderfully incon- 
 sistent thing, human nature ! Faceted like the 
 brilliant; as full of surprises as — the weather!" 
 
 During all this monologue, jerked out with 
 sudden silences, and laughings, at intervals, 
 Billy sat stolidly binding a handkerchief about 
 one hand. 
 
 "Bit me," he growled, "old beast!" 
 
 "Hush, Billy ! A sexton — your late antagon- 
 ist — a sexton, a man whose solemn office it is 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 33 
 
 to aid materially the Last, the Great Divorce — 
 the soul's decree of separation from the body — 
 to call such a man a — a beast — oh, Billy !" 
 
 As they neared the church their eyes caught 
 gladly the sight of the numerous vehicles 
 standing about the fence, and approaching on 
 the different highways. 
 
 "It is a case of 'Auspice Deo,' " Lingo Dan 
 went on. "Eh, Billy? Nil desperandum, aus- 
 pice Deo ! Observe what a pleasant congre- 
 gation we are to have. Glorious, glorious ! You 
 have the key to the vestry ?" 
 
 "Right here," Billy tapped his pocket. 
 
 "And for my part — how delightful are the 
 ways and means of modern civilization some- 
 times — the dear old soul's sermon is typewrit- 
 ten ! Although," and here the speaker lowered 
 his voice, as if unwilling to parade whatever 
 had the least glimmer of vanity about it, "I dare 
 say I should not be so utterly bad at an im- 
 promptu. I have known the time — in days that 
 are now dead — " 
 
 "And buried!" This came from Billy like a 
 fierce reproach. It was evident that gropings 
 into the past had no more charms for him. 
 
 Lingo Dan looked slightly hurt. "True — 
 most true. How close to the mark you do 
 shoot, Billy — never a divergence, never a stroll 
 into the abstract — ah, sometimes I believe I 
 envy you, Billy." 
 
34 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 But Billy only grunted. It was the grunt of 
 unbelief. 
 
 In a few moments they had reached the ves- 
 try door. Billy hitched a rope from the bridle 
 to the fence. Then he opened the vestry door, 
 and the two of them stepped in. Billy noted 
 with dull astonishment that his partner slipped 
 into the surplice with apparent knowledge of 
 its technicque. Then the organ began the ser- 
 vices of the day. 
 
 When the music ceased, a tall, pale figure 
 arose beside the desk that faced the altar rail- 
 ings. 
 
 "Dearly beloved brethren," said the strange 
 clergyman, "my portion in these services was 
 merely to have been the sermon, but sudden in- 
 dispostion coming to your good pastor, Mr. 
 Dawson, I am here to make what shift I can as 
 substitute." 
 
 There was a pause. The speaker's eyes 
 swept about the church. Every seat was taken. 
 But in every face he saw nothing save kind en- 
 couragement. Far in the last row, deep in 
 shadows, loomed the face of him that was called 
 Billy. All this the clergyman saw in a flash. 
 Then he began, in the conventional voice of the 
 preacher : 
 
 "Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture 
 moveth us in sundry places — " and thereafter 
 the services continued drowsily and perfunc- 
 torially. There was nothing to show that the 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 35 
 
 official of the occasion was not versed and 
 practiced in these devotional functions. At 
 times the congregation caught a note of fervor, 
 of loving emphasis placed on some phrase that 
 was more than usually freighted with the 
 poetry that informs the Prayer book; in the 
 mere elocution of the man they scented a ser- 
 mon that would make them forget even the 
 stifling heat. 
 
 From outside came the occasional whinny- 
 ing of a horse, and the pawing of impatient 
 feet. Beyond that, only the heat, quivering 
 against the fences in visible form. 
 
 On the back bench Billy was exerting the 
 last vestiges of his self-control to keep from 
 snoring. 
 
 When the general "Amen" had closed the 
 rehearsal of the Creed, the preacher moved to 
 the pulpit. With bowed head he stood silent 
 for some seconds. Then he folded his sermon 
 to his liking. As he read the text he flushed 
 for a space, but his voice never faltered. It 
 was from the gospel of St. Matthew, and it 
 read : 
 
 "Beware of false prophets, which come to 
 you in sheep's clothing." 
 
 It was a pity that the Rev. Dawson could not 
 have heard the eloquent delivery his sermon 
 was given by his locum tenens. Use blunts the 
 faculties somewhat, and it is certain that had 
 its actual author preached this sermon it had 
 
36 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 not seemed half so powerful. As it was, each 
 word, each phrase had behind it all the ner- 
 vous vigor of a musical voice, a mind at high 
 tension. 
 
 As he turned to the final page of the sermon 
 an agonizing suspicion crossed the ear and the 
 mind of the preacher. Was that a snore from 
 the back bench? 
 
 If even the faintest chance of such a thing- 
 existed, it was necessary to grasp measures of 
 force. Into the mere reading of another man's 
 words it was possible to infuse but a limited 
 amount of enthusiasm, after all. 
 
 Ostentatiously he closed the pamphlet from 
 which he had been delivering his sermon. With 
 eyes roving soulfully about the faces before 
 him, he brought his voice to its most musical, 
 gripping pitch. 
 
 "And so, my brethren," he exhorted, "sixth- 
 ly and lastly, we approach the lesson to be 
 learned. What is so rampant in the world to- 
 day, as this hypocrisy, this wearing of the 
 mask, the borrowed plume that Matthew 
 warned against in the words of the text. The 
 face is given man oft-times but to hide the 
 soul. New doctrines come and go; men prate 
 of new religion and new science; the traders 
 on the world's trend-to-believe make bargains 
 in the market place. And who, of us here, dare 
 say that some time in his life he has not played 
 the hypocrite? Have all of us worn naught 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 37 
 
 save these same garments, material and spirit- 
 ual, that we stand in now ? It is the one beset- 
 ting sin; the cancer that is eating wholesome 
 candor from the world. Here, in the open air, 
 under the clear sky, you think the wearing of 
 the mask can be but rarely. You err; the 
 mask is worn, in city or in country. Look to 
 your hearts and find the answer there. Look — " 
 His voice roared up against the rafters, so 
 that there was a quick shuffling heard from the 
 rear bench, and the preacher's straining eyes 
 caught the shine of Billy's amazement, and to 
 himself he actually thanked God ! "Look — 
 deep in to your hearts !" 
 
 With something like a sob in his breath, the 
 preacher turned his face to the East. "And 
 now to the Father" muttered his voice. With 
 the suspense over, the ring of eloquence was no 
 longer necessary. 
 
 Then he turned to the table, looking ap- 
 parently heavenwards, actually at Billy. As 
 the latter lumbered up the aisle, the preacher 
 droned in his monotone, standing with his 
 hands folded in front of him. 
 
 "Let your light so shine before men, that 
 they may see your good works." 
 . With these well-known texts, he proceeded 
 the while Billy passed the wooden plate ner- 
 vously up and down the pews. The envelopes 
 containing the contributions fell with a shuf- 
 fling sound of paper upon paper. There were 
 
38 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 no casuals in this congregation; the actual 
 sight of coin was hardly ever obtruded. 
 
 At last the collection was over. The plate, 
 heaped up with white riches, stood beside the 
 railing of the chancel. The preacher raced to 
 the benediction. 
 
 After that, with a change in his voice, he 
 came forward a step, and said : 
 
 "If the congregation will wait a few mo- 
 ments, I shall be glad to meet the individual 
 members of it personally." 
 
 Those who watched him closely always de- 
 clared that he had the most winning smile they 
 had ever seen. 
 
 Then, with a quick snatch of the collection 
 plate he hurried into the vestry. Into a corner 
 went the surplice. 
 
 "Thank the Lord," he whispered to himself, 
 "that this stuff's all folded in paper. Makes less 
 noise. " He slipped the money into a handker- 
 chief and opened the outer door cautiously. 
 
 Another second or two and the Travis 
 buggy was whirling over the highway to the 
 mountains, a cloud of dust concealing it. 
 
 In the church the congregation awaited their 
 meeting with one of the most eloquent preach- 
 ers they had heard in many a day. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Several hours later, after a forced march 
 through cedar brush that hid all tracks im- 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 39 
 
 penetrably, Lingo Dan and Billy stopped be- 
 side a mountain spring. 
 
 Spreading the contribution envelopes out on 
 the cool rocks in the shadow of the hill that 
 held the spring, Lingo Dan proceeded to open 
 them, to count the gains from their adventure. 
 
 Billy got up with an oath. 
 
 Lingo Dan lay back on his back and roared 
 with laughter. When he had breath enough, 
 he said : "But Billy, do you count the sen- 
 sation as nothing?" 
 
 Every contribution was a check. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WHICH EXPOSES SOME OF THE VICISSITUDES 
 THAT MAY BEFALL A COUNTRY 
 SHERIFF 
 
 The sheriff changed his rifle from his right 
 arm to his left, and crossed his legs. He looked 
 down the street nervously. He tried whistling. 
 But that did not seem to soothe. Then from the 
 corridor behind him, came the faint fume of a 
 cigar that had certainly never been bought in 
 Clay Oak. 
 
 A breath or two of amused profanity came 
 from the Sheriff's lips. "Danged if the cuss 
 ain't smoking perfectos in there, and me 'most 
 so nervous I can't sit still!" He gave a little 
 laugh and opened his nostrils to the scent of 
 the cigar. "Kinder soothin'," he remarked to 
 himself. 
 
 Half a mile down the street a little blue flag 
 was fluttering in the breeze. It seemed to de- 
 pend from a rod that was fastened to a fence, 
 or projected from a window ; at that distance it 
 was impossible to distinguish aught save the 
 little bit of azure itself. The Sheriff's eyes 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 41 
 
 rested constantly on the flag. Now and again 
 his gaze attempted adventuring elsewhere, but 
 some magnetism turned it always to the flag 
 again. The Sheriff's thoughts were as active 
 as quicksilver. If he had voiced them they 
 would have been something like this : 
 
 "I'd liever they'd just concluded to surprise 
 me than give me due warning with that there 
 rag. Just don't seem able to keep my eyes 
 offen it. Danged thing gives me the shivers. 
 .... But, come the worst, I'll do my duty. And 
 I reckon the boys they know that. Not that 
 I'm putting any blame on them. No. If so be 
 as I wasn't Sheriff I don't know but what I'd 
 be over yonder myself, waiting, and my hand 
 on the rope, and — . But I'm Sheriff of this 
 county." 
 
 With whch summing up the watcher on the 
 veranda of the Clay County jail continued his 
 observance of the far-off patch of blue. 
 
 "I hope," said a soft and suave voice 
 presently, from somewhere in the dark building 
 behind the Sheriff, "that you will consider me 
 nothing but solicitous for your peace of mind 
 if I offer you a cigar. I seem to observe that 
 you are nervous." 
 
 The Sheriff laughed staccato. "Maybe I 
 am," he said, "maybe I am. Though it's you 
 that has the most cause." He hesitated an in- 
 stant or two, and then continued : "I don't 
 know but what I will trouble you for some o' 
 
42 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 them seegars. I reckon I don't have to ask 
 you how you come by it." 
 
 "No," said the voice, "your immediate du- 
 ties hardly include that." 
 
 They both smoked in silence for a time. 
 Then the voice from within began again. "If 
 you will allow me," it said, "I must congratu- 
 late you on being in charge of what I, as a con- 
 noisseur, have no hesitation in pronouncing 
 the cleanest — er — little hostelry in my experi- 
 ence." 
 
 "Meaning the jail ?" said the Sheriff. "Well 
 I guess you're about right. Fact is, this county 
 ain't hardly got no use for it. Take it in 
 twelve months and there ain't enough doing 
 — in your line" — he waved his cigar in the di- 
 rection of the inner chambers — "in all of Clay 
 County to keep the jail open two months. But 
 the 'joining counties sends us in what they ain't 
 got room for, every once in a while, and I earns 
 my salary one way and another." He took a 
 few whiffs at the cigar, looked at it lovingly, 
 and continued : "Last week the Christian En- 
 deavor Society held its meeting here." 
 
 "I assure you," responded the other smoker, 
 "that my regret at destroying so peaceable a 
 routine is infinite. I am really most wonder- 
 fully sorry. If it had not been for me, you 
 might, I dare say, even now be guarding noth- 
 ing more dangerous than a meeting of a Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Society. Moreover, I see this 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 43 
 
 little affair is getting onto your nerves. If I 
 could only suggest something that I could do 
 to alleviate the annoyances I bring upon you !" 
 He paused and sighed audibly. "What a sur- 
 passingly peaceable community this must be!" 
 
 "You bet it is, stranger ! We got more eddi- 
 cation, more peace and prosperity right here 
 in this county than in any spot on this earth, I 
 do believe." The Sheriff's rifle-butt came down 
 on the floor of the veranda with a loud crash. 
 "Damn it, what d'you want to come around 
 here for, you and that cursed partner of yours ? 
 Gol darn you both for thieves and murderers !" 
 
 His voice hesitated a little before the last 
 word. 
 
 In the matter of your last epithet," said the 
 inmate of the jail, "are you rigidly exact, or do 
 you — allow a temporary wave of passion to 
 sweep you over the bar of fact?" 
 
 The Sheriff gaped an instant or two. 
 "Wonder if he wasn't in the traveling dentist 
 business once?" he thought. Then, his mind 
 having groped through the other's maze of 
 verbiage, he replied : 
 
 "Well, no; the parson ain't dead yet. And 
 if you've got any kind of a knack at pray in' 
 you can just pray that little old flag down yon- 
 der don't go to droppin about this time of 
 day. 'Cos that'll mean the parson's gone, an' 
 you're — ." 
 
44 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 "Forgive me," came the soft interruption, 
 "if I seem rude in my slowness, but — let me 
 understand you clearly. If the flag drops that 
 is the signal of the Reverend — I am ignorant 
 of his name; the honor of an introduction was 
 not vouchsafed me — having pased into the — 
 the beyond? It is. Thank you. And 
 further — 
 
 "And further that's the time you can do 
 your pray in'. For the boys give it out to me 
 that if the old man was to pass in his checks 
 they wasn't proposing to wait for the next term 
 of court as far as you was concerned." The 
 Sheriff" looked critically at his cigar and tilted 
 his chair back so that he could cross his feet 
 over the railing of the veranda and rest the 
 barrel of his rifle between his boots. 
 
 From the inside of the jail came the noise of 
 some one walking rapidly up and down, up and 
 down. Then that noise ceased, and gave way 
 to the sound of speech. 
 
 "In other words, this exemplary community 
 — this model of what I think you called peace 
 and prosperity — purposes to make use of the 
 somewhat — pardon me if I seem frank ! — 
 somewhat primitive methods of Judge Lynch? 
 I am exquisitely pained to think myself the 
 cause of such a turbulent innovation. Really, 
 I am sorry." 
 
 "You understand," resumed the Sheriff, 
 "I'm here to do my duty. There's my duty be- 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 45 
 
 fore me just as straight as the street down to 
 that little flag there, and here's my gun. The 
 boys is all good friends of mine, but I read my 
 duty clear, so I reckon they've got me to shoot 
 or get shot by before they gets inside of this 
 jail. 'Cos I'll shoot, sure as my name's Tod 
 Minton !" He took a sight along the barrel of 
 the rifle before he went on, with a vicious em- 
 phasis, "But don't you think I'm doing it for 
 any love of you !" 
 
 "My dear Mr. Minton — you underrate my 
 sense of your sanity. You are really, if I may 
 venture to say so, something of an uncommon 
 nature. I wish I had the chance to see more of 
 you. Your stern devotion to duty strikes me 
 as supremely quaint; it is quite the expression 
 of an elementary adhesion to first principles." 
 Again the inmate began to walk the floor of 
 the jail. "What method," he added, 
 presently, "are your friends likely to employ?" 
 
 "Oh," said the Sheriff, "the reg'lar thing: 
 limb of a tree and a rope." 
 
 "Ah! Again the exquisitely simple es- 
 sentials !" The prisoner resumed his loco- 
 motion. He began to mutter to himself. "Why 
 doesn't it come to me?. Ten minutes now since 
 I began the search for the way out ! There is a 
 way — I know there is a way! There is always 
 a way for the wise. The gods grant that that 
 rascal Billy is staying within reach! Why 
 doesn't it come to me — why, why?" 
 
4 6 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 From outside came the sound of the Sheriff 
 coughing. Next, he attempted to sing a line of 
 a hymn. 
 
 What a curiously high-pitched voice the fel- 
 low has, thought the prisoner. And with that 
 he stood suddenly still. A smile crept along 
 the corners of his mouth, and he blew a ring 
 of smoke into the air with a skill that be- 
 tokened sudden complete peace." Wonderful," 
 he thought, "are the ways of Providence. 
 Some day I should be glad of the leisure suf- 
 ficient to let me put forth a monograph on the 
 manifold protections Providence has accorded 
 me." He stepped to the barred door, and si- 
 lently surveyed the Sheriff. "He is about my 
 height," he mused. "For the rest — it's merely 
 a matter of the voice. Perhaps, after all, the 
 days when I went barnstorming are to bear in- 
 terest." 
 
 Along the street the shadows were lengthen- 
 ing. Presently the sun hung against the ho- 
 rizon, a huge ruddy disk, with the blue flag 
 spotting its centre. It was like the bull's-eye on 
 a target. 
 
 "Mr. Minton!" 
 
 The Sheriff looked back over one shoulder. 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Concerning these friends of yours — the 
 gentlemen with the crude intentions in the di- 
 rection of my humble self — do you object to 
 my expressing a curiosity! Time's wings are 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 47 
 
 tied for me, just now. Anything as a distrac- 
 tion — anything, even curiosity! What are 
 some of their names ? Who are they? If I 
 were a little boy, I should say : Tell me a story ; 
 make me forget the actual. As it is — satisfy 
 my curiosity. It s a whim — a foolish fancy." 
 
 "Well," replied the Sheriff, "I don't see as 
 it'll do you any good, but it certainly ain't go- 
 ing to do me no harm. Some of the boys? 
 Well, there's Jake Farren, he runs the O. K. 
 Store, and breeds setter dogs. And Jim Overs, 
 he's in the berry raising business, and his little 
 girl, Mattie, does most of the work. They'll 
 surely be on hand, I reckon. And Marsh 
 Quisenby, and Alec Grant, and — ." 
 
 From a little distance off came the double 
 signal of a passenger train. 
 
 "There's Number 7," the Sheriff interpo- 
 lated. "It's getting 'most evening now." 
 
 "And what," asked the prisoner, "is Num- 
 ber 7?" 
 
 "Number 7's the westbound passenger. She 
 stops up here at the junction for half an hour, 
 to wait for Number 10, eastbound. They cross 
 here." 
 
 "Thank you, thank you." The prisoner 
 laughed with a fine ring of bitterness. "They 
 declare, you know, that in the sight of death 
 one evinces the most ridiculous interest in the 
 minutiae of life. I dare say it is true." He 
 turned from the door, and paced up and down 
 
4 8 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 for several minutes. "In half an hour. Either 
 of two trains — in half an hour. And that 
 voice ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ' ' 
 
 Something about the prisoner's concluding 
 remark, something in his bitter laugh — the 
 ring of which seemed so true to the Sheriff, 
 touched the sympathy of that official. 
 
 "Danged if I see," he remarked, "how a fel- 
 low of the kind of advantages 't appears to me 
 you've had ever got so low down." 
 
 "A blindness, my dear Mr. Minton, that 
 does you infinite credit. How are you, living 
 in this quiet, lovely, sober corner of the world, 
 to understand the feverish complexities that 
 may be enmeshed in a life that spins always on 
 the froth of the stream? You move in paths 
 that are of an almost indecent plainness. You 
 say : this is right, and that is wrong. You say 
 that in attempting to persuade that aged person 
 of my superiority in ability to appreciate the 
 value of his moneys, I am a thief and — perhaps 
 — a murderer. Perhaps — if you must needs 
 seek exactitude from the dictionary. In my 
 world everything is relative. If you ask me if 
 I believe in honesty, I should ask you, in reply : 
 Honesty of whom, about what? There is 
 nothing so obvious, yet so generally unseen, as 
 the complete relativity of everything. You say : 
 this is a crime; I say that it all depends. If I 
 had time, it would give me keen delight to 
 
LINGO DAN. 
 
 49 
 
 make these beautiful tenets of the fairer life 
 plain to you, but — " 
 
 The speaker stopped suddenly, and the next 
 instant the Sheriff heard what sounded like a 
 faint moan. Then — 
 
 "Oh, my God !" came from the inner cell. 
 
 After that, utter stillness. 
 
 The Sheriff jumped up from his chair and 
 swung round to the corridor. In his haste he 
 leaned his rifle against the trellised wall of the 
 veranda. Beyond through the barred door he 
 could see the prisoner's body lying, a dull heap 
 on the floor. He opened the door, swinging 
 its heavy weight outward. "Shock — maybe; 
 maybe heart failure," he muttered. "Better so, 
 like as not." He advanced to the body, and 
 touched it with his foot. About the touch of 
 the thing there seemed to him something un- 
 canny, something inelastic, something that 
 spoke of dissolution. He stooped, in the fad- 
 ing light, to look at the face. 
 
 To see the better he turned, facing the open 
 door. The dying streaks of sunlight shot 
 across his sight and blinded him for a moment. 
 Then, from somewhere beneath him, two 
 hands gripped his throat, and he heard the 
 note of a peculiarly extensive whistle. 
 
 And then consciousness passed from the 
 Sheriff. 
 
5° 
 
 LINGO DAN. 
 
 Outside there was the sound of some one 
 gliding onto the veranda. 
 
 'That you, Billy?" hissed the inmate of the 
 jail. "I'm — most uncommonly glad to see 
 you. Quick, the gag, and the cord ! The time's 
 most unpleasantly short. This was the only 
 way. No use my trying to evacuate the premi- 
 ses solus, in these clothes; the vigilant villag- 
 ers know me too well. Help this gentleman off 
 with his things, and on with mine, Billy. 
 They don't know you when they see you, do 
 they? No? That's good. In fifteen minutes, 
 trains leave for East and West; until then I 
 have a part to play. Do the Sheriff's things fit 
 me pretty well ? Well enough in this light, eh ? 
 Good ! Why can't I cut and run right now ? 
 Fool ! What would the Sheriff be doing away 
 from the jail this time? I'm the Sheriff, Billy. 
 Now — to the station ! I — have an engage- 
 ment." 
 
 Billy crept away into the bushes. He who 
 had been prisoner stepped out onto the veranda, 
 took up the rifle, and balanced himself on the 
 tiptilted chair. He slouched the Sheriff's hat 
 down over his forehead, and waited. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 The bull's-eye was gone from the target. 
 The blue flag was withdrawn. 
 
 "Poor old soul!" said the watcher on the 
 veranda. Then he added, "But he shouldn't 
 have resisted!" 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 51 
 
 A fume of dust was in the air down the 
 shadowy street. 
 
 "I opine," continued the soliloquizer, "that 
 I am to be favored by visitors, Jake Farren, 
 Jim Oyers, Marsh Quisenby, Alec Grant, et al., 
 as those wearisome legal methods phrase it. 
 Well, I trust I may not, at this late date in my 
 career, be accused of discourtesy." 
 
 Out of the cloud of dust came a cluster of 
 human figures. In the dusk one could see that 
 all of them carried shooting weapons, and that 
 there were various efforts at facial disguise. 
 These were ineffectual, for the most part; 
 mere hangings of the hat too low over the 
 brow, or handkerchiefs roughly twined about 
 the lower face. 
 
 "It seems," mused the watcher before the 
 jail, "that there are conventions, even in 
 lynching. Even the merest debutants feel that 
 an unclad face is in bad form." 
 
 The approaching group had something of 
 solemnity about it. What sounds it gave out 
 were but rumblings and mutterings below the 
 breath. Their feet moved silently through the 
 dust of the road. 
 
 The last man, the whipper-in, the rear guard, 
 walked a few feet behind the others. From his 
 shoulder something trailed, snake-like, in the 
 dust, lashing up a wake of duncolored particles. 
 In that light the trailing something, and the 
 
52 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 opaque mist over it, had a suggestion of un- 
 canniness. 
 
 As the group assembled before the jail, form- 
 ing a sort of cordon before it, there came, from 
 the veranda, a high-pitched wailing of an old- 
 fashioned hymn. 
 
 "I guess Tod's kinder nervous," whispered 
 one of the outer assembly, "never knew him to 
 strike up 'Jesus will carry me through/ but 
 what there was something on his mind." 
 
 Then came a loud call, from the middle of 
 the group. 
 
 "Tod Mintonr 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Parson's dead." 
 
 "Ain't nobody any sorrier 'n me." 
 
 "You know what we're here for, Tod." 
 
 "I can guess pretty close." 
 
 "What you going to do, Tod?" 
 
 "Just my duty." The speaker fingered his 
 rifle slightly, and there followed a metallic 
 "tsk" that ricochetted from one to the other 
 of the group outside. 
 
 "Going to shoot, Tod?" 
 
 "What's the use talkin, boys? You know 
 me, and I know you. Ain't got one o' your 
 setter dogs along has you, Jake ? And I reckon 
 Jim Oversell be out there, too. Wonder you'd 
 not have give the job to Mattie, Jim. But 
 what's the use wastin' time? You think you 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 53 
 
 got a duty, I reckon, and, as for me, I read my 
 duty clear — and here's my gun!" 
 
 There was the growling of smothered talk. 
 Then, again : 
 
 "He ain't worth it, Tod." 
 
 "I see my duty clear. None of my business 
 who he is, or what he is. I'm Sheriff of this 
 county. And I'll shoot, sure as my name's Tod 
 Minton." 
 
 Outside there were hurried rumblings again. 
 "There's only one thing," said the leader, in a 
 whisper, to his comrades, "we got to shoot low. 
 We don't want to hurt him." 
 
 There was the sound of a foot touching the 
 veranda. 
 
 "I said I'd shoot," came from the trellis. 
 
 The next instant a Winchester spoke vic- 
 iously. The porch climber reeled, and fell back- 
 ward, and then came a volley that filled the 
 whole world, it seemed, with smoke and noise. 
 
 The body of the guardian of the jail crashed 
 heavily against the trellis-work, breaking it and 
 scattering it. The figure lay on the grass, limp, 
 with the smoke playing over it like a rising 
 dew. 
 
 Over it and past it the attacking party storm- 
 ed into the jail. 
 
 But one man, out of that party, lay dead in 
 the road. 
 
54 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 From the first shot to the utter desertion of 
 the road and the veranda only seconds had 
 elapsed. 
 
 The body that had lain limp under the ver- 
 anda suddenly sprang stealthily to its feet. 
 Then there was a swift move over to where 
 the other body lay, stiff, silent. There was an 
 exchange of hats and coats, and then he that 
 had parleyed from the veranda plunged into 
 the darkness that was between the jail and the 
 railroad station. 
 
 Billy was anxiously pacing the platform a 
 minute or so before the two trains were to 
 start. The sound of the firing had come to him 
 and he was filled with apprehension. Suddenly 
 a tall figure, in garments that he did not rec- 
 ognize, brushed past him. 
 
 "You go east, Billy," said the figure; "I'll 
 steer to the west. It'll be fifteen minutes be- 
 fore they have sense enough to wire, and I'll 
 get out at the first station. Thank the dear 
 Providence that watches us like babes, Billy! 
 Hurry!" 
 
 Presently the station was empty; the trains 
 had steamed away. Facing the west sat the 
 tall individual who had but now been an in- 
 mate of the Clay County jail. 
 
 "Dear Heaven," he smiled to himself, "I 
 wonder if the boards of any other stage have 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 55 
 
 ever felt the triumph of the art of mimicry so 
 palpably as did that little veranda just now! 
 To act — for one's life — ah — " He sank back 
 into the cushions in reflections full of apprecia- 
 tion of himself — the keenest epicureanism in 
 the world. 
 
 But in Clay Oak there are still men who will 
 go to their graves swearing that the man who 
 talked to them from the veranda of the jail, 
 who killed Jim Oyers just before he himself 
 was toppled over into the weeds was the Sher- 
 iff, Tod Minton — and no other. And yet the 
 Sheriff had been found, gagged and bound, 
 and half-strangled, on the floor of the inner 
 cell. 
 
 In Clay Oak they no longer laugh at mira- 
 cles. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN WHICH THERE IS A MEETING OF TWO EM- 
 PERORS, AND IN WHICH THE STARS AND 
 STRIPES ARE WAVED AND SAVED 
 
 It was not long after the affair with the 
 Sheriff of Clay that yearning, or necessity, or 
 both, drove Lingo Dan to other climes. That 
 the taciturn Billy accompanied him goes with- 
 out saying. Spring found them in Southamp- 
 ton. 
 
 The night was bright and chill. From the 
 roadway, lined with cheap lodging houses, 
 Lingo Dan and Billy slouched through the 
 gate that led to the docks and landing stages. 
 Just inside the gate was a board bearing a 
 chalked scrawl : 
 
 "Donau, Due 5 A. M." 
 
 Reaching the water, the two men sat down 
 on a luggage-truck. Before them lay the 
 steamer for Havre, seemingly all asleep. Oc- 
 casionly, fiercely whiskered men walked up, 
 looked at the lantern stuck within a transpar- 
 ency, that announced the steamer's destination, 
 and walked over the gang-plank to the deck. 
 From down the Solent came the hooting of 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 57 
 
 steamer whistles, and now and again some lo- 
 comotive on the Southwestern screamed shrilly 
 into the night. 
 
 A benevolently- faced dock-hand approached 
 the two that sat there by the water's edge. He 
 had only one leg, but he appeared vastly cheer- 
 ful. 
 
 "A fine night, mates," was his greeting. 
 
 "Hallo, Springheel Jack, hallo ! A fine night, 
 did you say? My friend, I call no night in 
 Southampton fine. Believe me, I consider this 
 the jumping-off place of the world. Why, oh 
 why, in the name of all things wonderful, do 
 sane people live here?" 
 
 Springheel Jack swore and spate. "South- 
 ampton docks," he said, "is the finest docks in 
 the world. New York's a toy-shop to it. I've 
 been round the world and touched all its har- 
 bors twice, Mister Longlegs, and you just be- 
 lieve me : this very same Southampton's got 
 the docks that makes 'em all look green." 
 
 Lingo Dan yawned wearily. "Well, well, 
 perhaps you're right. I am quite willing to 
 admit that I am no expert in dock measure- 
 ments. But this much, my dear man, I trust 
 you also will allow : Southampton is not the 
 most exciting place in the world in which to 
 spend a pleasant evening." 
 
 "Oh, — that!" The one-legged man looked 
 at the other two with utter contempt. "It's no 
 Paris, nor yet no Monte Carlo, if that's what 
 
58 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 you mean. There's just two things to South- 
 ampton — there's the work, and there's the 
 booze." 
 
 "Which, after all," smiled Lingo Dan, "is 
 the wisest distribution of pain and pleasure 
 that, in my philosophy, the world has yet found. 
 But enough of Southampton. Has the Donau 
 passed Hurst Castle yet?" 
 
 "No ; and maybe they'll not signal her there 
 at all. There may be fog. There's no telling. 
 If we stay here she may not tie up till six in 
 the morning, and if we go to get a bit of sleep, 
 the luck is, she'll sneak up to the dock in be- 
 tween three and four, and them that's stayed 
 out here all night will get the unloading of her. 
 But I'm for bed, I am. One night of that a 
 week's a bellyful for me; I had it yesternight." 
 And therewith the dock-hand stumped toward 
 the town. 
 
 Lingo Dan looked after him with a smile 
 flickering about his mouth, as a moth flickers 
 about a flame. 
 
 "But as for you and me, Billy," he said, 
 presently, "we take no risks. When the Donau 
 comes in, she finds us ready. I have thought it 
 all out, Billy. It is, like all other things in the 
 world, a speculation. But the stakes are small. 
 Merely, in fact, a ducking. Moreover, there is 
 the delightful element of surprise. It is like the 
 dear old game of grab-bag that we were wont, 
 as innocent little children, to play at church 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 59 
 
 festivals. Do you remember, Billy, do you re- 
 member? Dear, dead, days!" He sighed, and 
 looked out over the shining, rustling water. 
 Billy said no word. He was busy whittling 
 at a plank with a clasp-knife. 
 "Billy!" 
 
 The answer was a grunt full of annoyance at 
 being disturbed. 
 
 "Are you sure you quite recall our little 
 plan ? Your — h'm — preoccupation in — I doubt 
 not — most happy mental gymnastics of your 
 own, sometimes leads me to the fear that you 
 might possibly forget such minor details as 
 these immediate schemes of ours. Perhaps I 
 wrong you ? Say so, Billy, say so ! No ? Well 
 then, to repeat : in carrying the mail-bags from 
 ship to shore I manage to slip, and plunge, with 
 my burden, into the water. As I do so, I rip the 
 canvas with my knife, seize as many packages 
 of letters as will be easily carried without sus- 
 picion, and transfer them quickly to you, who 
 have, meanwhile, jumped in to rescue me. You 
 must be quick, remember, lest someone be be- 
 fore you in the timely aid to the drowning. 
 Don't let the fact that I can swim a mile to 
 your yard keep you from your noble effort, 
 Billy, and remember to be quick about hiding 
 the letters. They'll only suspect me, you know, 
 if the rip looks queer." 
 
 Billy nodded and grunted in what he doubt- 
 less meant to be a tone of acquiescence. 
 
6o 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Just think, Billy," his companion went on, 
 "of the beautiful possibilities of the thing. 
 There may be mere, commonplace coin; there 
 may be cheques; there may be love letters; 
 there may be, — ah, Billy, who can say what 
 adventures there may not be in that swift in- 
 stant that we take the liberty of intercepting 
 the Royal Mail !" He began to whistle "Mary- 
 land, My Maryland." Then he continued, 
 dreamily, almost whisperingly, "Have you no- 
 ticed, Billy, that at home there is ache and an- 
 ger against a European power? Have you 
 read the newspapers of late? Tragedy sits 
 waiting for our country. Our country ! Billy, 
 can you see, over there past Cowes, and past 
 the Needles, and out over the gray sea, a fine, 
 free, careless country?" 
 
 "Country nothing," interrupted Billy, rising, 
 "that's the Donan" 
 
 "So it is, Billy, so it is." 
 
 And they went forward to meet the Royal 
 Liner Donau. 
 
 About noon of the following day Lingo Dan 
 and Billy were being rowed out to a trim, rak- 
 ishly-curved steam yacht, that lay at anchor in 
 the Solent. 
 
 "If there is one thing," Lingo Dan was ob- 
 serving, "that I have always wanted more than 
 another, it is to own a yacht. It seems to be 
 the supreme realization of the human wish to 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 61 
 
 have one's house one's castle. And now, Billy, 
 now, my dream is to be realized." He let his 
 hand droop into the water; the spray flung it- 
 self slightly over both himself and Billy. "I 
 beg a thousand pardons, Billy," he declared, 
 withdrawing his hand ; "I meant not to spatter 
 the new clothes. How, by the way, how do 
 you think you look in them ?" 
 "Rotten." 
 
 "Oh, no, not that, surely not that. A trifle 
 eccentric, perhaps, but then — American mil- 
 lionaires are all accounted eccentric here. It 
 fits most admirably — I mean the eccentricity, 
 not the coat. For presently, you know, Billy, 
 you will have to be that wonderful creature, an 
 American millionaire. Your name will be Wil- 
 lie K. Elkhorn. The great Willie K. Elkhorn, 
 who owns more ice than any man in the world, 
 not excepting the Czar of Russia. But not 
 until I give the word, Billy; not until then." 
 
 They reached the yacht in a very few min- 
 utes. After a word or two and a glance at a 
 letter in Lingo Dan's hand, the master of the 
 yacht showed them to his private cabin. 
 
 "Mighty glad to meet you, Captain — Captain 
 Winters — thank you ! Sit down, and let's get 
 the business over quickly. Fact is, I've been 
 waiting for you, knowing they'd call on me 
 for the Hawk right away if they wanted her 
 at all. Let me see the Secretary's letter again. 
 Yes, that's right ; I told him the last time I was 
 
62 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 in Washington that any time the government 
 wanted a yacht that could sail round anything 
 afloat, they could have the Hawk" 
 
 "At your price, however?" 
 
 "Of course, Captain Winters; of course. I'm 
 a good citizen, Captain Winters, but I can't 
 very well offer the Hawk as a sacrifice on the 
 altar of patriotism. Besides, that letter from 
 the Secretary of the Navy authorizes you to 
 pay me my price, doesn't it?" 
 
 "Yes ; but the Secretary, Mr. Elkhorn, when 
 he wrote me that letter, knew that I wouldn't 
 pay a price I thought exorbitant." 
 
 "Well, nobody's going to be exorbitant ; not 
 Willie K. Elkhorn, anyway. Give me a gov- 
 ernment voucher, or order, or whatever you 
 call it, for this" — he scrawled some figures on 
 an envelope, and handed it to his visitor, "and 
 I'll get out of the old boat today. I'm due in 
 Paris this very minute, to tell you the truth." 
 
 The other read the figures, lifted his brows a 
 trifle, looked at Elkhorn, and smiled. 
 
 "Nothing less?" 
 
 "Not a cent." 
 
 "Well, it's a hard bargain. You know we 
 need the boat; and you know we need it now. 
 
 However " He sat down to the table and 
 
 made out a promise to pay. 
 
 Elkhorn looked over his shoulder as he 
 wrote. "Do you mind letting me see that let- 
 ter, and those instructions, again. It's a large 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 63 
 
 amount ; it's best to be quite certain — you'll not 
 take it in offense." He ran his eyes over the 
 documents that the other handed him. "Seems 
 explicit enough, doesn't it. 'Purchase at once 
 the Hawk, W. K. Elkhorn's yacht, now in the 
 Solent. He has expressed his willingness to sell 
 when called upon. Take full charge of her 
 yourself, retaining, if possible, the crew now 
 on board, so as to lose no time, and report at 
 the first possible moment at Fortress Monroe/ 
 H'm, h'm, h'm. 'Your own signature, on en- 
 closed blank, will be our guarantee to Mr. Elk- 
 horn. If necessary, show him this letter.' H'm, 
 h'm, h'm. Yes, that's the Secretary's signature 
 all right. And you're Captain Cornelius Win- 
 ters, and I'm W. K. Elkhorn, and here's the 
 Hazvk; and so I guess we'll have all settled in 
 about thirty seconds. I think there'll be no 
 difficulty about keeping the crew I have on 
 board. They're all men from the New Eng- 
 land coast, and they're just aching for a fight. 
 I'll call my sailing-master." 
 
 He put his hand to a button beside him. A 
 stout man in blue came to the door. 
 
 "Smalley," said Elkhorn, "this is Captain 
 Cornelius Winters, of the U. S. Navy, from 
 this time on in complete command of this 
 yacht. You will take all your orders from 
 him." 
 
 The sailing-master smiled hugely. "Is it 
 trouble ?" he asked. 
 
6 4 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 'Trouble?'' echoed Elkhorn; "well, you just 
 bet there's trouble. And it can't be long be- 
 fore it comes to a head. You're still in neutral 
 waters, Winters, but you can't get out of 'em 
 too soon. If you've any stores to get, or ar- 
 mament, you'd better hurry. As for me, I'm 
 off." He put on his hat. and made for the 
 doorway. Just as he reached it, he turned about 
 and said : "I leave the Haivk just as she is, fit- 
 tings, furnishings, and all. You get her inside 
 and outside. Do as you damn please with her. 
 Fight the enemy, run her on a reef, lose her, — 
 I don't care. Bye-bye, Smalley ! Good fighting 
 to you, \Yinters !" 
 
 And he was gone. The same boat that had 
 brought Lingo Dan and Billy to the Hazvk took 
 W. K. Elkhorn back to Southampton. 
 
 When the millionaire had left the cabin the 
 new owner sat staring at the wall. "I own a 
 yacht." he murmured; "I own a yacht. Dream 
 of my youth, regret of my early manhood. The 
 sudden realization almost stuns me. Is it real, 
 I wonder, is it real?" Suddenly he became 
 aware of Smalley still standing in the door- 
 way. "Mr. Smalley," he said, turning to face 
 that person, "with your navigation of the 
 Han'k I will not interfere at all, do you under- 
 stand. I will merely give you such orders as 
 are necessary — the fewer the better. My own 
 orders are sealed — to a certain extent. But 
 before everything, have the Haivk's white an4 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 65 
 
 blue changed to gray ; and have her put in con- 
 dition to take the rapid-fire guns that she's to 
 carry. At once, Mr. Smalley, at once. That's 
 all." 
 
 As the blue figure disappeared up the com- 
 panionway, Lingo Dan suppressed a burst of 
 chuckling. "Too bad," he said to himself, "too 
 bad! Poor Billy freezing up on deck all this 
 time. Billy, alias Willie K. Elkhorn — if nec- 
 essary. And I — oh marvelous jugglery of 
 chance! — I, Lingo Dan, performing the rites 
 of Captain Cornelius Winters, U. S. N. !" He 
 got up and began to probe the furnishings of 
 the cabin. As one of the little knobs turned at 
 his touch, he gave an exclamation. "A side- 
 board," he said, "a most delightful sideboard! 
 Champagne, iced!" He smacked his lips, and 
 put a bottle and two glasses on the table. 
 
 Then he went to call Billy. 
 
 Sfj 5{C ?Ji s(c sfc 5jc 5fl 
 
 "Can you make her out, Smalley?" Lingo 
 Dan was trying in vain to pierce with his own 
 unaided eyes the miles of gray sea-haze that 
 lay between the Hazvk and the vessel that had 
 just been sighted. 
 
 "Not altogether, sir; but, if I'm not much 
 mistaken, it's a boat of our own sort. There's 
 a nasty mist on the water." Lie kept the glass 
 to his eye in silence for some little time. "I 
 think I see her now. It's — yes, by ginger, it is ! 
 I know her ; we were in the same parade with 
 
66 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 her a few years ago. It's the Brandenburg/' 
 "The Brandenburg?" Lingo Dan whistled. 
 A smile crept along his lips. "Head for her, 
 Smalley," he said. Then he went over to where 
 Billy was sitting, gazing disconsolately at the 
 froth and swirl that danced above the screws. 
 
 "Billy, we have sighted the Brandenburg. 
 Think of it, Billy! The Brandenburg! The 
 imperial Brandenburg! Ah, Billy, see how the 
 dictates of an ever watchful Providence ordain 
 that the odds be even. In our time, Billy, have 
 we not launched our mightiest curses upon 
 those modern engines of thought that men call 
 newspapers ? Ah, countless times. Well, here, 
 at last, comes the reversal ; today, oh William, 
 we have cause to offer hearty thanks to the vig- 
 ilance of newspapers, of correspondents. Inci- 
 dentally, Billy, I take some small share of 
 praise to myself ; had I not been so faithful to 
 perusal of the world's doings, I would not have 
 known, weeks ago, when we left Southampton, 
 that the Brandenburg was likely to be in these 
 waters. And now, Billy, there she comes ; see, 
 Billy, how majestically she skims along! Ma- 
 jestically, I say, majestically. In more ways 
 than one, since she has the Emperor aboard." 
 He put his hand on Billy's shoulder so that the 
 other winced away from the grip and faced 
 him. "Presently, Billy, you will have to try to 
 seem more amiable than this. Your great mo- 
 ment is approaching; you will have to be the 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 6 7 
 
 American millionaire, Billy, to the very flourish 
 in the dot upon the I. An execrable coat, that 
 of yours ; a most infelicitous garment ! But — 
 on the other hand, most splendidly in keeping 
 with the general eccentricity upon which the 
 great goddess, Nature, foreseeing your enmil- 
 lioned destiny, has fashioned you." He turned 
 to leave ; then he flung a warning back over his 
 shoulder, in a tone that had no echo of flip- 
 pancy in it: "Keep sober, Billy, as you value 
 our lives !" 
 
 He walked back toward Smalley's post on 
 the bridge. His face, as he strode over the 
 Hazvk's deck, glowed with the delight he took 
 in contemplation of his yacht's grim war-vis- 
 age. This was a very different Hawk to the 
 one that had left Southampton a few weeks 
 ago. Grim in her slate apparel, grim with her 
 Nordenfeldts and Gatlings, grim with the mys- 
 tery of her purpose — it was hard for Smalley 
 and the crew to remember that this was the 
 same Hazvk that Willie K. Elkhorn had for 
 years been wont to use in his almost aimless 
 junketings in and out of all the pleasure-tap- 
 ping ports of both hemispheres. Yet it could 
 not be said that they frowned at the change; 
 rather, they welcomed it. They wondered, 
 perhaps, at the order that brought the Stars 
 and Stripes down, and sent no bunting of any 
 sort up in its place. But, after all, if that was 
 what Captain Winters wished, their part was 
 
68 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 merely to obey. So they worked, humming 
 and whistling, waiting eagerly for any decis- 
 ive activity. 
 
 "You are sure it's the Brandenburg?" 
 
 Smalley turned at the question. "I'll stake 
 my buttons on it," he said. 
 
 "Very well. Go as close as you can without 
 making them nervous ; have all our men keep 
 below, and run up signals of distress." 
 
 Presently a small boat was sent down the 
 side of the Brandenburg, and came toward the 
 Hazvk. 
 
 Captain Winters was ready for the newcom- 
 ers. Excessive courtesy met them above decks ; 
 below decks the spluttering, splendidly-uni- 
 formed strangers found themselves suddenly 
 surrounded, asked for their weapons, pinioned. 
 There was much thunderous, rumbling profan- 
 ity. 
 
 Captain Winters spoke in a tongue that the 
 crew of the Hazvk knew little about. He ad- 
 dressed the newcomers. 
 
 "Fluchen," he declared, "ist unnuets." Then 
 a terrific babble came at him from all the pris- 
 oners at once. But he waved them away into 
 silence. "I merely wished to convey to you," 
 he went on, "the salient fact that I understand 
 everything you say. Just as most of you now 
 understand what I say. Now listen. You are 
 in my power at this moment. I can keep you 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 69 
 
 prisoned here and set steam for the Cannibal 
 Island with yon if I choose. Your people on 
 the Brandenburg will never know until it is 
 too late; the mist grows thicker between us 
 every instant. If you want your lives, this is 
 what you must do. You must send your boat 
 back to the Brandenburg with such a message 
 as will ensure His Majesty's visit to this room 
 that now has the great honor of harboring you. 
 I do not care how the message reads ; you may 
 tell of having found a derelict, or of a dying 
 stranger calling on a last sight of his Emperor, 
 — I care not at all. Only this much, remember : 
 treachery will be a painful experiment. The 
 moment I scent tricks I shall blow His Maj- 
 esty and his yacht to a throne that is vastly 
 older than the divine right of kings. Do you 
 understand me?" 
 
 The prisoners, with their wrists chafing 
 against handcuffs, nodded. 
 
 "Remember, I must have your word, each 
 one of you. It is either that, or, — a little trip 
 for you, gentlemen, into as much of the Un- 
 known as I may choose for you." The face 
 of Captain Winters relaxed into a most kindly, 
 smiling expression. "If it will relieve your 
 fears at all, gentlemen, let me assure you that 
 the thing is but a whim, a jest. The fact is, 
 the owner of this yacht, Mr. W. K. Elkhorn, 
 of the United States, has made up his mind to 
 have your imperial master to dinner. He knows 
 
LIXGO DAN 
 
 the impossibility of the thing by ordinary 
 methods. Hence these desperate tricks of mine. 
 Do you not see? I. gentlemen, I myself, am 
 as much amused as I begin to see you are. In 
 confidence,, to you. I admit the apparent shame- 
 lessness of such social ambition; but, at the 
 same time, gentlemen, I find the thing too hu- 
 morous not to follow it with zest. And so, I 
 beg, do you do also. A harmless, curious, 
 whim — that is all. Have I your words, upon 
 your honor?" 
 
 By this time the strangers were between 
 frowning and laughing. The magnitude of 
 this folly was throwing them off their balance. 
 ''Diesc I'errueckten Amerxkanerr was the only 
 voice that one of them found. Their minds 
 hurried over the possibilities, the chances for 
 their own escape, the desperate extremities of 
 folly in the man before them, the hazard of the 
 Emperor's tragic wrath, the chances of his ul- 
 timate safety in this insane ship. But there 
 seemed no way out of compliance with Captain 
 Winters' commands. So they consented. 
 
 The rowboat left the Hazi'k, and was swal- 
 lowed up in the mist. Captain Winters was 
 talking rapidly and earnestly with Smalley. 
 After the sound of the oars was dead in the 
 gray veil, there was nothing alive but the voice 
 of the Hazck chafing in the swell. It seemed, 
 almost, as if the boat's crew was gone forever, 
 as if behind that veil of mist there was nothing, 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 7* 
 
 no Emperor, no Brandenburg. But Captain 
 Winters smiled. He had seen the message that 
 had been sent from the prisoned officers ; he had 
 chuckled at every word of it ; he had even pass- 
 ed a jest with the writer of it. 
 
 "Give them a sign of life, Smalley." 
 
 The Hawk's fog whistle called its way into 
 the mist. For answer, there came the plash of 
 oars, and the rowboat creeping, a shapeless 
 shadow in black, out of the gray. 
 
 A young man, keen eyed, of military bear- 
 ing, strode quickly up the ladder to the deck of 
 the Hazvk. It was the first time in his life that 
 he had come so far without receiving a salute. 
 He frowned, and his eyes gleamed. 
 
 The moment he touched deck there was a 
 clang behind him, and he heard a voice, in 
 English, giving the order : 
 
 "Full speed ahead, Smalley; you know 
 where to." 
 
 Whereupon the Hawk turned her nose away 
 from where the Brandenburg had last been seen 
 and went cutting and slashing through the 
 North Sea at the rate of twenty-two knots an 
 hour. 
 
 "No, Smalley, never mind the fog," went on 
 the voice; "we've got an Emperor aboard; 
 Would any fog assail the anointed of the 
 Lord? Full speed ahead. We have an Em- 
 peror aboard !" 
 
72 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 The Emperor sprang back to the taffrail, his 
 lips opened for a mighty shout, and then sud- 
 denly his sacred arms felt the restraining might 
 of stronger arms, and a hand went to his 
 mouth. Before his breath and his passionate 
 struggling left him the Hazvk was miles away 
 from its late resting-place. "I regret," said 
 Captain Winters, "the necessity for this vio- 
 lence against Your Majesty's person, but — may 
 I explain?" He waved his hand toward the 
 companion way of the dining-saloon. 
 
 The Emperor looked at the man before him, 
 at the impassive crew of aliens about him; his 
 hands clenched convulsively. He was white in 
 his rage. "My officers?" he asked at last. 
 
 "Are safe/' said Captain Winters. "Will 
 you lead the way?" 
 
 Involuntarily the Emperor's eyes widened a 
 little as he stepped into the dining-room. A 
 table was set for three. There was such silver 
 as the Brandenburg could not equal, such splen- 
 dor of decoration and furnishing as the imperial 
 yacht had never dreamed of. 
 
 "Your Majesty, I hope, has not yet dined?" 
 
 "Enough, enough ! What is this insult ? Oh ! 
 — there shall be blood for this; blood, I tell 
 you ; Europe shall run with blood." 
 
 "Europe?" Captain Winters smiled a lit- 
 tle. "How unfair! Why Europe? Poor Eu- 
 rope ! It must be sad to be a European. Come, 
 come, Your Majesty forgets — Your Majesty! 
 
LTNGO DAN 
 
 73 
 
 Besides, I have only to touch a button, here, 
 in the wainscot, and our dinner can be made a 
 bread and water solitude. Let me explain. The 
 yacht that now shelters you is the property of 
 Willie K. Elkhorn, who does himself the honor 
 to ask you to dinner. He takes unusual means 
 to assure your presence; that is all." 
 
 "A fool! A lunatic! How does he dare?" 
 
 "He is an American." 
 
 The Emperor stared. 
 
 "Has it ever occurred to Your Majesty that, 
 far over seas, there is a nation that has, h'm, 
 to use an expresion of Mr. Elkhorn's, emper- 
 ors to burn. Do you know that there is a coun- 
 try yonder where emperors are so thick that 
 one passes them daily on the street. They 
 command more millions than you ; they have 
 greater luxuries; they have more than your 
 command over pleasure, and none of your dan- 
 gers, none of your responsibilities. They are 
 not shackled. They can outbid you in the mar- 
 kets of the world. You order the finest palace 
 car in the world ; they can order ten better ones. 
 You order the invasion of a continent ; they can 
 buy that continent's safety before your order 
 is cold. And yet, — and yet you talk of the di- 
 vine right of kings ! Your Majesty, there is 
 only one country that has divine rights, and 
 that is the country where all are kings!" 
 
 The Emperor stirred nervously. 
 
74 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "I am sorry I torture Your Majesty with 
 my diffuseness. But it is only right that I seek 
 to show justification for our actions. Here is 
 the case: two emperors sailing the same sea; 
 strangers, yet both emperors. Old, foolish su- 
 perstitions of etiquette forbid these two great 
 equals becoming acquainted as man to man. So 
 one of these two emperors spurns the stale con- 
 ventions of propriety, and makes a bold bid for 
 fellowship. He invites you to dinner. He is 
 an American emperor ; you are a European em- 
 peror. Call it an adventure, a folly, — call it 
 what you please; but it is only the expression 
 of W. K. Elkhorn's passionate desire to have 
 your sacred legs under his democratic mahog- 
 any. Will Your Majesty be pleased to dine?" 
 
 The Emperor was still frowning. 
 
 "Are you the man ?" he asked, abruptly. 
 
 "I? Your Majesty is pleased to flatter me. 
 I? No, no; not I. I am no emperor. My 
 very loquacity should show you that. It is the 
 province of emperors to be brief ; I — I am the 
 opposite. No ; I am merely the humble repre- 
 sentative, the companion, the spokesman." 
 
 "Are you secretary or valet?" 
 
 A flush came over Lingo Dan's face. Then 
 he remembered his Captain Winters' pose, and 
 curbed himself. 
 
 "Something of each, perhaps. But — with 
 more power than either. In fact, as concerns 
 the present, Your Majesty will be good enough 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 75 
 
 to remember that I am the — the representative 
 of the host. Let me be plain; you may hunger, 
 or you may dine. Your life, on this yacht, is 
 not worth a kreutzer. Will you be pleased to 
 dine?" 
 
 "I will have blood for it." 
 
 "Will Your Majesty be pleased to dine?" 
 
 "Such insolence! And to a prince!" 
 
 Lingo Dan put out his right arm, to where 
 a disk of white showed in the rosewood wains- 
 cot. 
 
 "If I touch this button," he said, "and give 
 the order, that sacred person of yours may be 
 compelled to suffer in solitude and abstinence 
 tonight. It seems you will not understand. We 
 invite you in good faith, in some attempt at 
 cheery fellowship ; but — if you choose to cut up 
 rough, we, too, can take that cue. Do you not 
 realize that you are powerless?" 
 
 "Fool! Do you forget the telegraph, 
 the—?" 
 
 "I forget nothing. True, there is the tele- 
 graph. What you mean is that in a few hours 
 or so your other officers on the Brandenburg 
 will grow anxious, then frantic. They will run 
 into the nearest port and wire their wonderful 
 news broadcast, to all the secret agents of your 
 government. The ports of Europe will be in 
 wait for this yacht; there will be a sword in 
 the hand of every harbor-master this side of 
 Sandy Hook. But I also remember this : the 
 
76 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 same reason that will keep your government 
 from publishing your absence to the world 
 openly will prevent your own actions along that 
 line. Consider the ridiculous possibilities of 
 the thing! If I judge Your Majesty aright, 
 publicity of this episode would torture you far 
 more than the thing itself. Think of all the 
 comic papers in Europe picturing your invol- 
 untary imprisonment on the yacht of an Ameri- 
 can millionaire ! Think of the chorus of laugh- 
 ter in the world ! Above all, think of the dan- 
 ger in your own government. Is your position 
 so secure that you can afford the rumor of your 
 sudden incapacity ? I think not. If you refuse 
 the suggestions that we wish to put to you — 
 quite in the way of dinner conversation, you 
 will understand — we have it in our power to 
 take you over seas for an absence of, oh, well, 
 at least a month. Are your affairs at home so 
 safe they can suffer your evanishment so 
 long?" 
 
 No answer came from the sullen Emperor. 
 "Your Majesty, I take it, will now be pleased 
 to dine?" 
 
 "I will have blood," was still the answer. 
 
 "Not blood, but Burgundy, Your Majesty, 
 we offer you. A finer wine, I wager, than the 
 imperal cellars hold. Your Majesty !" The last 
 two words rang out with sudden sharpness. 
 
 "I hear you." 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 77 
 
 "Your Majesty, the dinner grows cold. An 
 American emperor waits for no man. Will you 
 be pleased to dine, or " 
 
 Before the sentence came to end a shock and 
 a following shiver came to the boat. In the din- 
 ing-room the flowers spilled their petals over 
 the white cloth, and the glasses clanged together 
 with a bell-like note. Lingo Dan's finger cov- 
 ered the white disk in the wall for a second. 
 
 "Call Smalley," he said. 
 
 They waited in silence until the sailing-mas- 
 ter came. 
 
 "Anything wrong, Smalley?" 
 
 The man's face had a sort of horror in it. 
 "We cut down a fishing-smack," he said. 
 
 "Any damage?" 
 
 "We could see nothing, sir: I fear they're all 
 gone down. I've slowed her up and " 
 
 "Slowed ! I take it we're not damaged at 
 all! Full speed ahead, Smalley, full speed 
 ahead." 
 
 "But there might be some of them floating 
 on wreckage, so I thought " 
 
 "Sorry, Smalley, but you must not think to- 
 night. Full speed ahead! We are on business 
 of the — Emperor's." 
 
 After vSmalley had gone and the regular beat 
 of the screws could be heard again, Lingo Dan 
 turned for a glance at his guest. The Emper- 
 or's face was white, his eyes had the look of a 
 man who is hunted to a corner. The sudden 
 
73 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 realization of the ruthlessness of his captor had 
 come to him out of those words with Smalley. 
 
 "Yes, I will dine," he said, with weariness in 
 his voice. 
 
 "Ah, you will see, Your Majesty, how high- 
 ly we value the honor." 
 
 Now that his point was won, there was noth- 
 ing more suave, more gentle, more apparently 
 obsequious than the manner of Lingo Dan to 
 his guest. "You must forget everything, save 
 that we are dining in good fellowship. Indeed, 
 indeed ! you must think only that you are be- 
 stowing upon us a great favor." He touched 
 the electric bell again. "And now to introduce 
 to Your Majesty the owner of the boat, and for 
 the time, your host." 
 
 There came into the room the squat, ungain- 
 ly figure of Billy. His hair was short as the 
 bristles on a boar, and it stood up almost as 
 grimly. His face was uncannily clean; the 
 soap had made the fiery complexion glow with 
 an added lustre. He slouched in, with one 
 shoulder higher than the other; the head held 
 low, with the forehead poised like the horns of 
 an angry bull. When Lingo Dan's smooth 
 sentence of introduction came, this version of 
 Willie K. Elkhorn, American millonaire, mere- 
 ly jerked his head the faintest bit, flashed his 
 eyes for a second or so over the Emperor's re- 
 splendent uniform, and dropped into the chair 
 nearest him. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 79 
 
 And then began a wonderful dinner. There 
 have been curious companions at dinner before 
 in the world, but surely there have been few oc- 
 casions like this one. Here sat the Emperor 
 of one of the great Powers, treating as an equal 
 two nameless vagabonds, two conscienceless 
 adventurers, the one a mere brutish ruffian, the 
 other an ingenious trifler with tragedies, a cun- 
 ning artificer of plans to no good purpose, a 
 man who might have been anything, and had 
 chosen to be nothing. And yet the Emperor 
 was bound, and the vagabonds were free. A 
 curious dinner, surely. 
 
 They were come to the entree before any- 
 thing more than perfunctory phrases passed. 
 Then Lingo Dan spoke : 
 
 "Mr. Elkhorn, Your Majesty, it may aston- 
 ish you to learn, is a gentleman whose fame is 
 a household word with sixty million people. 
 More people stand in awe of him than of any 
 private person in the world. And why? Be- 
 cause, Your Majesty, he controls a human 
 comfort — he is King of Ice. Let Mr. Elkhorn 
 say the word, and there will be no ice from one 
 end of your dominion to the other. What 
 would you say to that, Your Majesty, when 
 fevers came, or tepid bottles of the wine you 
 choose to call mere Schaumwein, or " 
 
 The Emperor lifted his brows and almost 
 smiled. 
 
8o 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "It is the age of the material," he admitted. 
 
 "You are right, Your Majesty; it sometimes 
 seems so. And yet, I confess, in your case 
 your constant war against the material has 
 made us admire you. Mr. Elkhorn, Your Maj- 
 esty, is quite a devotee of art. The famous 
 Meissonier that kings have bid for hangs in 
 his palace on the Sound, and the finest thing 
 that Rodin ever did awaits you in his hallway. 
 Like all men of great mental force, he seeks 
 relaxation from the cares of business in devo- 
 tion to art. And long ago he came to consider 
 you one of the greatest artists in the world. 
 Your poetry, your painting, your plays, your 
 speeches, your splendid taste for pageantry — all 
 these have held him your admirer for many 
 years. And now, you see, being so near, and 
 yet; through the barrier of convention, so hope- 
 lessly far, he simply could not, could not resist 
 an effort to come face to face with you, to voice 
 to you his earnest worship of your talents and 
 your greatness, — your greatness as an artist 
 rather than as emperor." 
 
 The adroitness of the flattery pierced the ar- 
 mor of the Emperor's scorn. What defiance 
 of his power as emperor had not been able to 
 achieve this subtle fawning before him as a 
 dilettante succeeded in. He became, in a trice, 
 the man ; the emperor was gone. 
 
 "I drink," he said, with a lift of his glass, 
 "to Mr. Elkhorn." 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 81 
 
 On solemn smiles the three glasses were 
 emptied. 
 
 "It is something I shall always remember," 
 said the pseudo Captain Winters, "this of Your 
 Majesty and the great Mr. Elkhorn touching 
 glasses. It may, who knows, mean more than 
 the mere fellowship of man to man, — it may 
 foreshadow the close comradeship of nations." 
 
 The Emperor made no direct reply. His 
 eyes were wandering about the splendor of the 
 cabin. "A beautiful room," he said, "a beau- 
 tiful boat. Has America many such ?" 
 
 "Scores upon scores. If Mr. Elkhorn cared 
 to boast, he could tell you of this vessel's speed, 
 of her guns " 
 
 "Her guns?" 
 
 "Why, yes, her guns. You see, Your Maj- 
 esty, America expects every millionaire to do 
 his duty. Mr. Elkhorn is doing his ; he is 
 turning his yacht over to the American gov- 
 ernment for — anything that may turn up. In- 
 deed, she is at this moment bound for our coast, 
 and " 
 
 "But not before touching somewhere?" 
 
 "Oh, no, Your Majesty, not before. We 
 merely wished the delight of a dinner with the 
 greatest artist of the time — " he bowed toward 
 the Emperor — "and then, we are at Your Maj- 
 esty's commands." 
 
 "It is a strange experience," mused the Em- 
 peror aloud. His face now wore a smile, now 
 
32 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 a puzzled look. Presently, as the wine stirred 
 him, the frowns and furrows left his face, and 
 the smile seemed to feel more at home about 
 his lips. Surely this was the most curious flat- 
 tery to which he had yet been subjected, to be 
 kidnapped that he might grace a table as diner ! 
 An odd phase of fame, but yet fame. 
 
 It was midnight, and the coffee was low in 
 the cups, when Lingo Dan asked, obsequiously, 
 
 "The Hook of Holland, at dawn, Your 
 Majesty, will that be convenient for you?" 
 
 The Emperor nodded briefly. 
 
 "And before you leave us, Your Majesty, 
 there is another favor we would ask. A little 
 thing, and yet — . Between ourselves and 
 Spain there is some chance of war. If war 
 there be, the far East would see some of it. 
 The harbor of Manila, for instance. Your 
 Majesty has warships in that harbor. Were 
 they to join with Spain, it would make heavy 
 odds against our side. Will you cement the 
 many pleasant things you have said about our 
 land by vowing to stay neutral ?" 
 
 "Spain is my friend." The Emperor's frown 
 returned to his face. 
 
 "Yet you have dined with us." 
 
 "I did not ask to." 
 
 "True. We are the beggars ; we have beg- 
 ged your presence, as we beg your promise of 
 neutrality." 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 83 
 
 "Why should I promise — to a man who is 
 no ambassador, nothing but a private indi- 
 vidual ?" 
 
 "Very well. Your Majesty shall see Amer- 
 ica. It is a pleasant place, — but it is a week 
 away." 
 
 The Emperor glared across the table. "A 
 trap," he mutered, "a trap." 
 
 "You have only to sign a paper, Your 
 Majesty, promising Hands Off. Your word — 
 the word of an Emperor — shall suffice. If not, 
 — ten days at sea with an Emperor, that is 
 what it means to Mr. Elkhorn and myself; it 
 would, looked at from my selfish side, be a 
 boon from you if you refused to sign. Still, 
 — if you care to return to the Brandenburg — " 
 
 "You threaten me?" 
 
 The pseudo captain passed the wine. "No; 
 I implore. See, I do not ask you to take arms 
 with us; I only ask your neutrality." 
 
 They sat in silence for a few moments. The 
 eyes of Billy glistened sleepily. Now and 
 again they closed. He came to with sudden 
 jerks, not unconnected with the fact that Lingo 
 Dan had long and active legs. The fume of 
 cigar smoke and fruit and hot coffee was thick 
 in the room. As the moments passed, Lingo 
 Dan took out a sheet of paper from a pocket 
 book, penciled on it hurriedly, erased a little, 
 and then folded the paper, waiting for the Em- 
 peror. 
 
8 4 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 At last the guest spoke. "I agree," he said. 
 
 "I knew you would," said Lingo Dan, "have 
 you not broken bread with us. Surely an Em- 
 peror, like an Arab, would not refuse a favor 
 after breaking bread." 
 
 He rang for pen and ink. Then from his 
 notes he dictated a curt line or two, that the 
 Emperor wrote down, and signed. 
 
 "And now," said the acting host, "our pleas- 
 ant dinner comes to an end. It is one that I 
 shall treasure as the greatest repast of my life. 
 While my conscience rebukes me for the man- 
 ner in which we engaged your Majesty's pres- 
 ence on board, I am consoled by the thought 
 that the dinner was excellent, and the wines not 
 unfit for an Emperor. We have merely used a 
 few hours of your Majesty's time, and we have 
 done the cause of our country a trifling good 
 turn, yet we are the richer by having seen and 
 talked to the keenest artist of the time. Oh, 
 by the way, your Majesty, will you send word 
 to your officers — dining, I fancy, elsewhere in 
 this good boat — to leave with you at the 
 Hook? Will you send them a message telling 
 them your stay with us was just a mere im- 
 perial whim? Then all will be ready for your 
 leaving us." 
 
 And so, when daybreak came, an Emperor 
 stepped aboard a small boat, waved his hand 
 once to two figures on the deck of the Hazvk, 
 and had his men pull to the shore. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 85 
 
 As the Hawk went skimming across the 
 shining, waveless waters, Lingo Dan turned 
 his eye up to the bare poles. 
 
 "Run up the Stars and Stripes !" he called to 
 Smalley. 
 
 Then, as the flag flew out behind the yacht, 
 he looked at Billy with a smile. 
 
 "We've served our country, Billy, served 
 our country. It's not everybody that does that 
 — for nothing." 
 
 Some weeks later, when the United States 
 generally were somewhat concerned as to 
 whether a certain European Power would in- 
 terfere in the naval encounters near Manila, the 
 neighborhood of Larchmont, on Long Is- 
 land Sound, was thrown into excitement by 
 the fact that the private yacht of Willie K. 
 Elkhorn had anchored there one night, and 
 that a certain Captain Winters, with a com- 
 panion, according to the statement of Sailing- 
 master Smalley, had never since been heard of. 
 But over in a shaded meadow, near the New 
 Haven track, two men lay listening to the birds 
 and insects. And these were the only two men 
 in America who knew why there would be no 
 interference with America in the Far East. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder, Billy," one of these 
 two men remarked, after he had laughed aloud 
 
86 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 at his silent thoughts, "if it was decidedly un- 
 healthy for the real Willie K. Elkhorn when 
 next he goes to Europe." Then he laughed 
 again. "And as for Captain Winters — But 
 I'll bet he wouldn't have had the fun with that 
 yacht that we did, to say nothing of — h'm, sav- 
 ing the country. Would he, Billy?" 
 
 "Not by a damned sight," was the answer. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TELLING OF SOME RIFLE BULLETS AND THE 
 INVENTION OF A SOMEWHAT 
 SPLENDID LIE 
 
 Two men lay face downward in the rank 
 underbrush. At intervals their cheeks leaned 
 over rifle-barrels, and the hot air rang with 
 shots, while their shoulders ached so that one 
 of the men grumbled audibly. From the slopes 
 facing them came a constant crackling, fol- 
 lowed by a malignant hissing note that swayed 
 and cut through the leaves about them. 
 
 One of the men suddenly put his face down 
 into the grass and flung his rifle down. "It's 
 too hot," he said. 
 
 The other turned a trifle and surveyed his 
 companion. "Billy," he declared, "your con- 
 cise manner of expressing the truth is worth 
 much poetry. You are right — the heat is un- 
 speakably atrocious. And yet — " he put down 
 his rifle, and rested his head on one hand — 
 "and yet, Billy, in the matter of poetry, do you 
 know that if I were a poet I could find a sub- 
 ject in this very weird whistling that now — 
 
88 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 well, that makes these quarters of ours so un- 
 pleasantly unsafe. I should call it The Song 
 of the Mauser.' I should think it might appeal 
 to Kipling. Listen, Billy !" 
 
 The crackling from the yonder slopes and 
 the whistling over the heads of these two came 
 almost simultaneously. 
 
 "Just like the peewits moaning over their 
 nests," said the longer of the two men. "Billy, 
 am I right in thinking you uncomfortable ?" 
 
 "Oh," growled Billy, "shut up!" 
 
 "Strange, Billy, that you should use that 
 phrase. Shut up ! Does it never occur to you 
 the while we are — ahem — exposing our bodies 
 for the sake of fair Cuba and the Stars and 
 Stripes, that if kind fate had not given me the 
 happy inspiration of making for this self-same 
 corner of God's great sun-kissed foot-stool we 
 should at this moment be both secure, and 
 snug, and cribbed, and cabin' d, and confined, 
 and all the rest of it, in jail? Have you for- 
 gotten those little matters of the venerable par- 
 son, the conscientious sheriff, the emperor, 
 the — " 
 
 A bullet from the slopes cut a slice out of 
 Billy's hat. Billy took up his rifle with a vic- 
 ious snort, and flung his retort of lead at the 
 enemy. The powder from his clumsy Spring- 
 field draped the couple with a veil of smoke 
 that made an excellent target for the Span- 
 iards. Bullets began cutting the leaves and 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 89 
 
 stalks as if some unseen scythe were at work. 
 Billy growled louder. 
 
 "Oh, Dan!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I'd rather be in jail." 
 
 For a time there was silence between them. 
 The sun scorched them, and the bullets sang 
 their sinister songs to them. Then the tall 
 man's soft, musically modulated voice began, 
 as if it were a monologue. 
 
 "Dear Billy, you have, I grieve to observe, 
 but little appreciation of the good and beauti- 
 ful. Does no notion of the beauty of our pres- 
 ent position strike you ? Think of it, my dear 
 Billy! We, of whose persons the United 
 States government is so enamored that it has 
 sent special requisitions after us — offering, in- 
 deed, quite substantial rewards for the person 
 fortunate enough to find us — we, I say, to es- 
 cape the public honors that the authorities no 
 doubt intend to bestow upon us, have taken to 
 the disguise of the volunteer army. We are 
 fighting for the flag. We are fighting for Cu- 
 ban freedom. We are heroes. We are fight- 
 ing the nation that blew up the Maine. We 
 are fighting — " 
 
 "Rats !" Billy almost spat the word onto the 
 grass. "I'm fighting for the loot." 
 
 Dan raised himself a trifle to catch Billy's 
 eye. "Billy, you astound me. Loot? Loot? 
 I don't remember the word's meaning. Fame, 
 
9o 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 honor, revenge ; I know that the world expects 
 a soldier to be inspired by these things. But 
 loot!" He smiled at Billy's rumblings. Then 
 he added, even more softly than before, as if 
 the grass or some Spanish bullet might over- 
 hear, "Incidentally, Billy, you will kindly re- 
 member that in the matter of loot you will 
 keep your hands off until I — " He stopped 
 suddenly, gripped his rifle to him, and hissed 
 under his breath : 
 
 "A crazy man — or a coward ! Look, com- 
 ing this way !" 
 
 Coming towards them, headlong over the 
 clear space to their right, was a figure in blue 
 and buff. To cross that open ground was al- 
 most certain death. To the Spaniards on the 
 slopes before them the man must be cut out 
 clearly as a silhoutte. From where the man 
 was coming another infantry regiment was 
 fighting its way up the slopes. 
 
 The man must have left those ranks. Dan 
 and Billy watched silently. The man plunged 
 headlong towards them. 
 
 "It's a coward," said Dan, presently. "I can 
 see his face. It's got stage-fright written over 
 it." 
 
 The runner dropped, in a flash, to the grass. 
 One of the singing bullets had found him. He 
 lay in the sun-glare, a mere dark spot on the 
 clearing. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 91 
 
 Over on the right the regiment that this 
 coward had fled from was being beaten back. 
 It moved gradually further to the right flank 
 of the attacking line. In the regiment to which 
 Dan and Billy belonged came the command for 
 deploying more to the left. The ground on 
 both sides of the clearing was to be deserted. 
 
 Warily, painfully, the men crawled through 
 the underbrush, edging away from the clear- 
 ing. Only Dan and Billy had not yet joined 
 in the regiment's change of base. Dan's eyes 
 were still fixed on that dark spot that lay out 
 there in the open. 
 
 Billy growled with impatience. "Coming?" 
 he said, and turned to rejoin the regiment. 
 
 But Dan seized him by the shoulder. "Look ; 
 look out there!" The spot of darkness on the 
 sunlight open was moving, was crawling. The 
 man tried to rise; he fell back again, with his 
 legs crumpled under him. Dan looked at Billy. 
 A buzzard circled high above them. A faint 
 shudder went through Dan as he swept his 
 keen eyes from the spot in the clearing to the 
 spot in the sky. 
 
 "Come, Billy!" said Dan, and without an- 
 other word the two flashed out into the open. 
 The bullets thickened all about them, but they 
 never stopped until they had reached the man 
 who was wanted by death and the buzzards. 
 
 Back in their regiment a cheer broke out. 
 Dan and Billy were carrying the man across 
 
9 2 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 the clearing into the protection of the thick- 
 ets. Some miracle seemed to keep the Spanish 
 bullets away from them, or else the sheer 
 splendid folly of the thing diverted the aim of 
 the enemy. 
 
 The man whose mortally wounded body 
 these two had brought into such shelter as 
 was possible was, after all, little more than a 
 boy. A white face, with the outlines fine and 
 delicate, the stamp of race plain on its front. 
 The regimental surgeon shook his head over 
 the boy's closed eyes. "You got him decent 
 burial, that's about all," he said to Dan. 
 
 Dan smiled sweetly. "My dear doctor," he 
 replied, and at the man's enunciation the sur- 
 geon gave a start and squinted with surprise, 
 "my reward is not so much the boy's actual 
 salvation as the exquisiteness of my own sen- 
 sations." The surgeon was for asking him 
 who he was, when other wounded claimed his 
 attention. 
 
 The wounded boy's head was resting in 
 Dan's lap. Presently his eyes opened. The 
 lips shivered like leaves stirring in the faintest 
 of breezes. Finally sound came. 
 
 "My name — my name." Then the lips 
 worked for a few seconds in mere struggles 
 for breath. "Look — my right breast." Dan 
 put his hand into the boy's shirt, and brought 
 out a smaller leather case. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 93 
 
 "Yes. Open it." Dan took from the case a 
 card. He read the name, and nodded his head. 
 
 "Don't let — the others know." The boy 
 tried to smile. 
 
 "You — I can see — you know. I don't care, 
 but — don't let the others know. Bury me — 
 here. And — listen. My father — you must tell 
 my father — that I died — in battle." 
 
 Something misty came into Dan's eyes. He 
 took the limp hand of the dying, gasping 
 youngster. All his wonted elaborateness of 
 phrase went from him. "All right, old man," 
 he said, cheerily, "I'll tell him. I'll find him. 
 Never fear, I'll tell him." 
 
 "He — he was a soldier. He — hates a — a 
 * coward." 
 
 The dying coward was quiet for a moment 
 or so. Then his eyes turned to Dan with the 
 sudden flame that comes before the snufning 
 out of all light. 
 
 "What's your — name?" said the fading 
 voice. 
 
 "My name?" A long, thin hand went softly 
 over the boy's forehead. "I'm called Lingo 
 Dan." Again there was silence, and then Dan 
 spoke again. "And this — this is Billy." He 
 nodded to the bulky, squat figure of his com- 
 panion. 
 
 The boy looked from one to the other. 
 "Good-by— Dan. Good-by, Billy!" 
 
94 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 The eyes closed slowly, as if their owner 
 were sinking into a doze. Presently Dan put 
 his ear to the boy's lips. Then he lifted a fin- 
 ger, and beckoned to Billy to take the dead 
 man's head and place it flat to earth. 
 
 Several months afterward, when there was 
 left of the Spanish-American war nothing but 
 the wrangling over the proctocol in Paris, two 
 men, in attire distinctly unfashionable, went up 
 the steps of a house in the most fashionable 
 part of Fifth avenue. The footman who opened 
 the door looked at them suspiciously. But 
 something on the card that the taller of the two 
 presented made him hurry to his maste** in a 
 manner that was almost undignified. 
 
 In the vast hallway Dan and Billy surveyed 
 their surroundings with the eyes of connois- 
 seurs. 
 
 "Silver," remarked Dan, "to the tune of 
 several hundreds. A most reckless, a most in- 
 decent exposure. The china is also rare. Most 
 of it, moreover, is easily portable. A feast for 
 the eye. And for the pocket — " 
 
 A door far down the corridor opened, and a 
 tall, white-haired man in black came eagerly 
 towards them. Instinctively he turned to Dan. 
 
 "Come in, come in," he said, putting a hand 
 on a shoulder of each, and almost pushing them 
 into his study. The room was barely fur- 
 nished. Books hid the walls except where pic- 
 tures hung; these latter were all battle scenes. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 95 
 
 "Of course," said the old man, "I knew it 
 would have to come. I knew he must be dead. 
 And yet I kept on hoping. One will keep on 
 hoping, you know, so long after hope itself is 
 dead. But there were so many curious circum- 
 stances — " He stopped quickly, and changed 
 his tone. "You saw him die?" 
 
 The other two nodded. 
 
 Confidence came into this father's face once 
 more. "There were so many curious circum- 
 stances. The boy thought himself in disgrace. 
 He went away, foolishly, boy-like, to wipe out 
 what he called a stain. Sometimes I used to 
 try to fancy he would still come back ; that he 
 was merely plucking up courage to face the 
 world, to face society, to face me. Just as 
 if — " he paused and looked out of the window 
 — "just as if I would not have taken him at any 
 risk." He began to fumble with the little 
 leather case that Dan silently handed him. 
 Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and began to 
 pace the room. Then he shook his head like 
 an angry lion. "Bah !" he said, "I'm weak. I 
 get old." He sat down again. "Tell me how 
 he died. With a brave front, of course. Tell 
 me; I can listen. He comes of a race of sol- 
 diers. We all die fighting." He smiled, and 
 signaled to Dan to proceed. 
 
 Dan cleared his throat a little. Billy scraped 
 an awkward foot heavily over the thick carpet. 
 
9 6 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "He died," began Dan, "with his face to the 
 foe. His death was a splendid folly. A com- 
 rade was wounded, lying in a clearing, target 
 for all of Spain's bullets. Your son, sir, 
 sprang out into the open, picked up the woun- 
 ded man, brought him into the lines again, and 
 then fell. He was shot in no less than three 
 places. I observed to Billy, I may remark — 
 have I introduced Billy to you ? — at the time of 
 your son's magnificent bravado, that so fear- 
 less a son must surely have had a fearless 
 father. That, of course," he dropped his voice 
 a little, "was before I knew." He bowed to- 
 ward the old man. 
 
 The old man was on his feet again, striding 
 about the room nervously. "You saw him die, 
 you saw him die. I wish I had been there. It 
 atones for everything, does a death like that. 
 Oh, yes, there was much to atone for, much. 
 But — a death like that ! Good boy, good boy !" 
 He went to the window and looked across the 
 avenue, and at the passing strollers. "Did he 
 speak — before the end?" 
 
 "He was in my arms. He wanted me to tell 
 you. I promised." Dan did not look into the 
 old man's eyes. He was looking at Billy, whose 
 eyes were roaming about the walls, computing 
 the value of the hangings. 
 
 "He died in your arms?" The old man's 
 glance went suddenly up and down, through 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 97 
 
 and through his two visitors. "You have been 
 mustered out? Yes. Have you employment, 
 or profession?" 
 
 Dan's smile curled about his mouth corners. 
 "We have," he said, "our profession." 
 
 The rich man, thinking of his son and his 
 millions, hesitated. Something in this tall 
 man's manner spoke the gentleman, the man to 
 whom it was impossble to offer alms, to tender 
 rewards. "For the man in whose arms my son 
 died, the man who tells me of the splendor of 
 my son's death," he said finally, "there is noth- 
 ing in this world that I would not do. I want 
 you to remember that. Shall I hope, as be- 
 tween gentlemen, that if there is ever anything 
 in my power you will let me know ?" 
 
 Dan looked at the master of the house with 
 a strange gaze. "Some day — perhaps. Who 
 knows? But for the present I have merely 
 done my duty. My name? The name I wear 
 is Lingo Dan. It was the name your son knew 
 me by. Your son — who died in battle." He 
 got up to go, and signed to Billy. "I know 
 that you wish to be alone. But you must think 
 only of this — your son died in the forefront of 
 the fight, with his face to the foe." 
 
 The master of the house looked at the 
 speaker with suddenly brimming eyes. "You 
 are right," he said, "it is a fine thing to linger 
 over. With his face to the foe — his face to the 
 
9 8 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 foe !" He shook hands with them silently, and 
 closed the door after them. 
 
 The hall was deserted. Its silver and gauds 
 stood unprotected. But the two passed swiftly 
 out to the avenue as if they were afraid of fol- 
 lowing ghosts. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN HOW ONE MAY ENTER 
 SOCIETY WITHOUT BEING INTRODUCED 
 
 How they had come by it is little matter. It 
 was, without any chance of dispute, a very 
 smart dog-cart. The cob between the shafts 
 had all the requirements — action, style and 
 pace. The turnout, in fact, as a complete pic- 
 ture, glittered and flashed in the sunlight. Had 
 you been one of the charmed circle that hunt 
 and play polo over certain well-favored dis- 
 tricts of Long Island you would have looked at 
 the picture I have hastily sketched, and your 
 first thought would have been to try and place 
 the tall gentleman who held the whip, to recall 
 in just what gallery he belonged; whether it 
 was at the last hunt ball or the most recent in- 
 ternational wedding that you had met him. If 
 you were merely one of the vast majority out- 
 side the pale, you must perforce have hesitated 
 not a second about assigning him and his to 
 his evident sphere. He, his man, his trap and 
 his horse all seemed stamped with the hall- 
 mark of smartness. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 The cob went merrily clicking over the blue- 
 gray macadam. In the distance you could hear 
 the ocean rolling gently against the shore; in- 
 sects hummed in the sunny morning air ; every- 
 thing aspired to the making of pleasant moods. 
 
 "My hand has not lost its cunning," said 
 the gentleman on the box-seat, as they turned 
 a nasty corner most dexterously. "Yet — I 
 quail, Billy, I positively quail at admitting the 
 number of years since I did this sort of thing." 
 
 They drove in silence for a time, and then 
 the same voice rang out, with a quiet chuckle : 
 "Billy, do you realize that you look — immacu- 
 late? The fit seems tight, perhaps, but — on 
 my word, good William, it shows your figure 
 most exactly. A really providental fit. And 
 mine ?" 
 
 Billy nodded his head and grinned. That 
 was notoriously the nearest approach he ever 
 made to sociability. It was, in this case, to be 
 construed into complete approval of the other's 
 apparel. 
 
 "I am glad you like it. I think, myself" — 
 he stopped to survey his trousers, his driving 
 coat, his boots and his hat and gloves — "that 
 it is rather neat. Do you notice how it spurs 
 one's optimism to be well dressed, Billy? With 
 the consciousness that not the most censorious 
 can pick a flaw in one's exterior, how one's 
 spirit does plume itself! A vanity, no doubt, 
 a hollow vanity ; yet, to the true philosopher, a 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 IOI 
 
 vanity that conceals a subtle significance. 
 Conscious of looking our best, are we not ca- 
 pable of achivements we would otherwise never 
 find courage for? Why, Billy, clad as I am, I 
 could, without the quiver of an eyelash, assume 
 once more that position in the world's society 
 that, in the beginning and by rights, is mine, 
 that—" 
 
 He ceased suddenly, his eyes roving over the 
 gentle slopes before him. He smiled, flicked 
 the cob over the flanks slightly, and said : "I'll 
 do it, I'll do it." 
 
 Before them stretched the most deliciously 
 velvet lawns, reaching up to a white mansion 
 in the old colonial manner, pillared and wide- 
 porched, that stood against the brow of the lit- 
 tle hill, with elms nodding beside its roof. The 
 gay colors of fair dresses made bright spots 
 against the background of the picture; voices 
 and laughter came floating down on the breeze. 
 
 "It's a risk, Billy ; a great risk. But I think 
 we can carry the thing off properly. At the 
 worst, we can vow we've made a mistake, eh? 
 the best of us make mistakes. Shall we join 
 them." He nodded to the lawns that were now 
 more clearly visible, and to the keeper's gate, 
 that began to show around the bend of the 
 road. Billy merely looked his bewilderment. 
 
 "Join 'em?" 
 
 "Certainly; join them — I, the members of 
 the party on the lawn; you, the overfed 
 
102 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 footmen and grooms. Why not? It is true, 
 we have not been invited; but, my dear Billy, 
 did it ever occur to you that 1 it is the men who^ 
 have not waited for invitations who have sue- - 
 ceeded in the world ?' Besides, what if we are 
 frowned on ? Have we not this steed and these 
 wheels ! As for you, it is simple enough ; you 
 have merely to keep reasonably still and to re- 
 frain from sampling the liquors too indiscrimi- 
 nately." 
 
 Billy grunted at the tightness of his coat. 
 He looked as if he would like to rip it open 
 with one forcible wrench. He grunted again, as 
 a thought came to him; a grunt half of an- 
 guish at the labor imposed by thinking, half by 
 way of fixing Lingo Dan's attention. 
 
 "But what about — dose?" He nodded into 
 the distance that lay behind. He seemed to be 
 about to say more, to specify more closely, but 
 his tongue got out nothing beyond that 
 "dose;" the gesture over his shoulder was his 
 only finish to his thought. 
 
 "Our late antagonists in argument, do you 
 mean ? Tush ! why think of them ? Let us for- 
 get them. They served us pleasantly; they 
 were the instruments of a benign fate that de- 
 sired our prosperity; they came at an oppor- 
 tune time to mend our fortunes ; in the mend- 
 ing of ours, they suffered a little — that is all; 
 they are past, they are in the behind. Have I 
 not been tedious enough whenever I have pot- 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 tered about in the past? Let us forget them. 
 Let us thank our Maker that they had such ex- 
 cellent tailors and were so thoughtful as to 
 be built so exactly in the mould of — our poor 
 selves. But otherwise — " He waved his whip 
 significantly over the highway, as if sweeping 
 the subject away. 
 
 But Billy, frowning and scratching his stub- 
 bly head, came upon another obstacle. "But 
 what's our names?" 
 
 "M or N, Billy; M or N. Which being 
 translated means, that it all depends. Use 
 your wits, Billy; find 'em, if you can, and use 
 'em. You know the first letter in our alpha- 
 bet: never give a direct answer. Be as Irish 
 as you can; never meet a question; go around 
 it. As for me, I shall follow the cue of circum- 
 stances." 
 
 They were passing the keeper's lodge, their 
 wheels scraping over the fine gravel of the 
 winding, smoothly leveled private driveway. 
 Neatly ordered shrubs and colorful flower-beds 
 flanked the drive. Whirling spurts of water 
 sprinkled the lawns at intervals. Some fox- 
 hounds came bounding over the turf, leaping 
 beside the cob and the cart. 
 
 The cob clattered to the porte-cochere with 
 a most spectacular flourish. The ladies on the 
 lawn lifted their pince-nez and their eyebrows. 
 
 "Not a bit like Tommy Darrough," said one 
 of them. 
 
104 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 ''No/' said another; "he always does it as if 
 he were afraid of his varnish." 
 
 A figure in white muslin gave a smothered 
 exclamation and pushed through the bevy of 
 ladies with the haste and authority of the hos- 
 tess. 
 
 "My dear Lord Orson, so good of you," she 
 said, holding her hand out to the newcomer 
 and smiling with the effusiveness of a marion- 
 ette ; "we'd really quite given you up ; we were 
 quite melancholy about it." 
 
 He shook her hand gravely. 
 
 "I should never have forgiven myself," he 
 said. 
 
 "And you are alone ?" 
 
 "My dear lady — one would always like to be 
 alone, with you." 
 
 She laughed and tried to blush ; but her own 
 handiwork succeeded in defeating the natural 
 wave of color. 
 
 "I mean," she continued, "that Mr. Dar- 
 rough couldn't come. He telephoned me, you 
 know, yesterday that he would bring you over 
 and—" 
 
 "Ah, yes. That was yesterday." 
 "He's not ill?" She pretended quite genu- 
 ine alarm. 
 
 He smiled, and began kicking the turf gently 
 with his boot. He lowered his eyes. Then he 
 looked, smilingly, into her eyes. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 "Poor Tommy !" he began, and she gave him 
 time for nothing more, but laughed out at him 
 shrilly. 
 
 "Oh, I see; so stupid of me. Yes; isn't it a 
 pity? He will, once in a while ; it's in the fam- 
 ily ; he says he likes to keep the family tradition 
 afloat. Still, sometimes he comes — like that." 
 
 "He must be very interesting — like that." 
 
 "You are quite right. He really is; he is 
 quite witty. I tell him that he's always wel- 
 come, because when he's quite sober he's as im- 
 posing as a curate, and when he's not he's al- 
 most as clever as one of those fellows you pay 
 to entertain you. Is he very bad?" 
 
 "Very." 
 
 "Well, I'm sorry. Still, it was awfully good 
 of you to come aione. It hadn't occurred to 
 me. Tommy Darrough thinks nobody can 
 drive that cob but himself, you see — " 
 
 "I never had a horse I didn't have the same 
 delusion about." 
 
 "But I'm dreadfully selfish. I've not pre- 
 sented you to a soul. I know the other women 
 are calling me names. Come !" 
 
 She led him into the middle of the group, 
 and for a minute or so there was a merry bab- 
 ling of feminine voces. He emerged from it 
 with a Titian-tinted beauty whose name he had 
 faintly caught as Miss Carrick. 
 
 "Tell me," she whispered, "about Mr. Dar- 
 rough." 
 
lo6 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 He was still admiring the generalship with 
 which she had steered him out of that scrim- 
 mage and annexed him. Besides, he scented 
 danger. 
 
 "I would far rather talk about you," he said. 
 "You are a friend of Mr. Darrough's, aren't 
 you?" she went on; "a real friend, I mean." 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Do you know what Mrs. Noysse is saying ? 
 That Mr. Darrough is — " She put out her 
 hands with a spreading out of the fingers. "Oh, 
 I can't say it." 
 
 "If it were true, would you care?" He 
 watched her, with amusement sparkling in his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Of course. Hasn't he told you ? Don't men 
 speak of those things? We're engaged — con- 
 ditionally. Do you wonder I care?" 
 
 "I admire you for caring. Darrough's to be 
 envied." He coughed slightly. "Beautiful 
 place of his, don't you think so?" 
 
 "Yes, yes. But you didn't tell me what I 
 wanted to know. When you left him, was he 
 — did he — have you no message from him for 
 me?" 
 
 He looked at her without reply for what 
 seemed to her an age. It was, when you think 
 wrong thing; it needed time. 
 
 "He told me," he said, finally, "that when I 
 found the most beautiful girl here I was to give 
 her this." He handed her the orchid from his 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 107 
 
 buttonhole, an orchid that grew nowhere else 
 on the island but in the greenhouses at Dar- 
 rough Court. Then he turned quickly and left 
 her clutching the flower. He meant to take a 
 quick glance at the stables that he might assure 
 himself on the subject of his man, but an asth- 
 matic dowager sailed across his bows before he 
 could escape. 
 
 "You know, Lord Orson, I knew your 
 father. You're his image." 
 
 "You flatter me." 
 
 "Yes; you're really very like him. He pro- 
 posed to me twice." 
 
 "He was always persistent." 
 
 "International marriages were not the fash- 
 ion then; my father wouldn't allow it. But I 
 was dreadfully fond of him. Did he ever 
 speak of me?" 
 
 "Often. I was to look you up." 
 
 "Ah, I'm glad he remembers. Well, you 
 must come and see me. We'll be in our town 
 house again next month. Mind you come." 
 
 "How do I get there ?" 
 
 "Cab it." 
 
 "Ah, of course. You're very good. I'll not 
 forget." He bowed over her hand, leaving her 
 rioting in her memories of youth. 
 
 "I wonder," he thought to himself, "who my 
 father was, and who the dear old dame is, and 
 whether that girl with the sunset hair thinks 
 her fiance is intoxicated or only tired ?" 
 
io8 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 Upon that thought the hostess broke in. 
 
 "Dear Lord Orson," she twittered, putting 
 her head on one side, like a bird, "I'm sure you 
 like Chopin." 
 
 "How did you tell ?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, it's in your eyes. I can always tell by a 
 person's eyes whether they like Chopin or not. 
 Chopin, like the soul, is all in the eyes. Do you 
 like him a la Pachmann or — " 
 
 "I like Chopin when he is most Chopin- 
 esque." 
 
 "Ah, how true that is. You are right. But 
 when is he that?" 
 
 "Who knows? It is something one cannot 
 define." 
 
 "Yes, that's it, isn't it? My husband never 
 could stand Chopin. I believe he died of too 
 much Chopin." 
 
 "One cannot avoid Chopin by dying." 
 
 "You mean he is — up higher? How beauti- 
 fully you put that! Are you a musician, too? 
 I thought all Englishmen cared for was horses 
 and dogs. Tommy Darrough can't stand Cho- 
 pin; he told me once he considered Chopin a 
 particularly acute form of indigestion." 
 
 "Tommy's very material." 
 
 "Yes. But I do think he plays an entranc- 
 ing game of polo. Of course you play?" 
 
 "What if I didn't?" 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't think it!" 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 109 
 
 "Don't you think Chopin and polo are 
 rather extremes?" 
 
 "But they're the fashion." 
 
 "Where extremes meet and never speak to 
 each other. Well, I do play polo ; but I swore 
 I wouldn't exhibit on this side, you see, so I'm 
 afraid—" 
 
 "But I — I should simply love to see you. 
 Won't you, for me?" 
 
 She leaned close to him, so that he could 
 discern the various strata on her cheeks quite 
 plainly. 
 
 "In that case," he said, "I shall play — if it 
 kills me." 
 
 With that little victory to her credit, the lady 
 of the house felt that her reputation as coquette 
 had been lived up to, and that she could pass to 
 other fields. "I see," she declared, with a 
 smile that exuded intimacy of the most abso- 
 lute sort, "that nobody is talking to little Miss 
 Remsden. I shall have to do it myself; these 
 are the things that a hostess is for," and she 
 fluttered away, leaving him fingering his chin. 
 
 He turned, the next instant, into what 
 seemed one of the stableyards, where a groom 
 was apparent. He beckoned to him. 
 
 "Will you see if you can find Lord Orson's 
 man, and say that he is to come here at once?" 
 he said. He found some silver in the ticket- 
 pocket of his coat, and gave it to the groom. 
 
no 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Billy," he said, when that person appeared, 
 "the thing is getting too warm. I have med- 
 dled in another man's love affair ; I have prom- 
 ised to play music or polo, I've forgotten 
 which, and I'm going to call on an old lady I 
 never saw before, who lives I don't know 
 where. No accidents so far; but I smell dan- 
 ger. Yes, I smell danger. Incidentally, Billy, 
 I observe, by my sense of smell, that you have 
 been wetting your whistle. I think you may 
 as well consider it sufficiently moist for the 
 present. Isn't that a back road to the drive? 
 Yes ; it is. Well, I think you'd better get some 
 of the other grooms to harness up the dog-cart 
 for you — do the jovial business, Billy — and be 
 waiting just at the turn there, in case anything 
 happens. Just as quickly as you can, mind!" 
 
 Returning, he found a shriveled up gentle- 
 man peering about, evidently looking for some- 
 one or something. "Ah," he said, as he came 
 up, "been looking for you. I'd like to put you 
 up at the Searinthian Yacht Club. I'm Com- 
 modore, you know. Wish you'd come up to 
 the Newport races on my boat; nice lot of 
 people going. What do you say, eh?" 
 
 "It's very kind of you. I'll have to put it 
 down; I really forget, you see, how far I'm 
 engaged ahead. I'd like to, I assure you." 
 
 "Well, then, that's all right. You'll let me 
 know? And about the club — what's your full 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 III 
 
 name? Foolish of me not to know, but I never 
 do remember names." 
 
 "The title will be enough." 
 
 "Oh, I see. All right." He went off, nod- 
 ding his head, and giving the effect of a mani- 
 kin that had supersensitve nerves. 
 
 'He wanted my full name ? H'm ; this is get- 
 ting warm. I do hope Billy — " Here he gave 
 an exclamation and strode down toward the 
 lawn in front of the house. Something was at- 
 tracting all the attention — something that was 
 happening far down the park, near the gate- 
 keeper's. The ladies were calling for opera 
 glasses. 
 
 "Is the lodgekeeper beating his wife?" asked 
 one, and "Tramps, I suppose," said another. 
 
 Whatever it was, it made a cloud of dust 
 down the drive, and the noise of altercation 
 and profanity floated over the lawns. Two fig- 
 ures emerged from the dust, eventually, and 
 came tearing up the park. Such figures, too! 
 In that picture, especially, they were queerly 
 placed. The hats they wore were merely rims 
 of felt; the boots had the pink of flesh peering 
 out in odd places ; the clothes were shining and 
 discolored and ripped and ragged. The faces 
 were smeared with blood and dust. 
 
 "It seems we're in for it," said the yachting 
 Commodore; "your lodgekeeper did his best, 
 but they were too much for him. Tramps or 
 
112 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 lunatics, I suppose. Can't think why the au- 
 thorities don't police the district better." 
 
 The ladies were huddled into the conserva- 
 tory, peering through the glass. 
 
 The fantastic couple was still making 
 straight for the house. It was quite impos- 
 sible to discern anything of them save their ex- 
 treme dirt and raggedness. Besides dirt and 
 dust and blood they were possessed of a fury; 
 the people in the house could hear their foam- 
 ing, almost. The grooms, who had been called 
 up, formed a line before the conservatory. 
 
 One of the figures stopped for breath and 
 then cried out a name. 
 
 "Mrs. Noysse!" he cried, and the voice 
 sounded thick and chokeci with dust and pain. 
 
 "Heavens!" said the hostess, "who is the 
 creature?" And she told the grooms to keep 
 the lunatics away. 
 
 The creature who had cried out made a sud- 
 den dash past one of the grooms, tore open a 
 door of the conservatory, and gasped out what 
 sounded like : 
 
 "Edith !" 
 
 "Tommy!'' shrieked Miss Carrick, putting 
 one hand in front of her as if to warn away a 
 ghost. "Tommy Darrough !" 
 
 "Yes, that's it," said the figure, "though I 
 don't blame you for not knowing me." And 
 he sat down and began fanning himself with 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 113 
 
 the doormat. They crowded all about the dis- 
 reputable figure and began to ask questions. 
 But he shook his head and warded off with 
 both arms. "I want some whisky," he said, 
 "and I want it now. Then I'll tell you." 
 
 "But, Tommy," said Miss Carrick, gently, 
 "must it be whisky ? Lord Orson told us, you 
 know, that you " 
 
 Darrough stared at her, as if asking himself 
 whether it was he or she that was crazy. 
 
 "Lord Orson?" he repeated. "What in 
 the world do you mean?" 
 
 Miss Carrick turned to look for the person 
 mentioned, that he might confirm her. 
 
 "Where is Lord Orson?" she asked. 
 
 "Permit me," said a new voice. It was that 
 of the other tattered figure. This figure took 
 off its rim of what had been a hat, bowed its 
 dusty rags almost to the ground, and said : 
 "Permit me. I am Lord Orson." A ghastly 
 red line through the caked grime on his face 
 widened as he spoke, showing the lips. 
 
 Miss Carrick was peering into Darrough's 
 face. "It's you, Tommy, I see that; it's you; 
 I know the voice and I know the eyes. But 
 if that's Lord Orson, who was it that came 
 in your dog-cart, and ?" 
 
 "They drove away ten minutes ago by the 
 back drive," said a groom at that moment in 
 reply to the hostess' question. 
 
ii 4 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 Everybody looked at everybody else. 
 
 "In my dog-cart?" said Darrough; "in mine, 
 did you say? Oh, Lord; oh Lord; don't you 
 see, Orson; don't you see?" 
 
 But Lord Orson was calling for whisky-and- 
 water and a hot bath. They bore him off to 
 where he could get both, leaving the ladies be- 
 sieging Darrough, who was rocking with 
 laughter that cracked the dirt on his face as 
 an earthquake cracks the world's crust. 
 
 "Who was he?" he repeated. "Lord only 
 knows !" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FROM WHICH IT WOULD APPEAR THAT DUCKS 
 MAY BE PREFERABLE TO DUCATS 
 
 An old man, brown and bent, splashing 
 through the marshes and over the meadows, 
 clumsy rubber boots reaching to his hips, and 
 a gun over his shoulder, stopped suddenly, just 
 as the sun rose like a copper halo over the wa- 
 ters of the Sound. 
 
 "Bless my soul!" he remarked, "it's funny 
 what will wash in with the tide sometimes !" 
 
 He stooped and, taking note that the two 
 men were fast asleep, picked up the guns that 
 lay near them, fingered them for a few mo- 
 ments, put them down again, and took to 
 scratching his beard. He considered the two 
 figures a moment, and then looked vaguely to 
 the Southward. "Easterly weather before the 
 day's over," he mused, "Low tides, like as not. 
 Ha ! There goes a bunch of red-heads, now !" 
 And he watched a flight of ducks heading for 
 the coves further up the river. When he 
 looked down again, it was to find the taller of 
 the two men awake, and regarding him with 
 a smile. 
 
n6 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Do you mind telling me," said the tall per- 
 son, in a singularly alluring voice, "where in 
 the world we are?" 
 
 The little old man looked over the marsh, 
 with his eyebrows lifting. "Good Lord," he 
 remarked, to the marsh, it seemed, "he doesn't 
 know where he is ! That's good, that is !" 
 
 "A valuable jest, I make no doubt. But 
 scarce a hospitable one. Consider, my old 
 man of the sea, we are strangers ; is this frivol- 
 ity of yours quite meet for wayfaring folk who 
 have, in all the world, no means to keep away 
 the tricks of Fate, save these." And he lev- 
 eled his gun at the old man, with a rude sign to 
 his companion, long since wakened by the noise 
 of voices, to do the same. "To voice again 
 the worn refrain : We have nothing in the 
 world but these weapons. Will you pity the 
 poor strangers?" 
 
 But the old man looked at them with a light 
 of amusement sparkling in his eyes. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "nice guns, too. Damascus 
 barrels, English, hand-made. Nice guns. 
 They'll give you ten dollars a piece for them 
 in New Edinbro, anytime you want to hock 
 them." If there was threat of personal vio- 
 lence in the tall man's speech or pose, the little 
 old hunter was, to all outward seeming, quite 
 innocent of it. 
 
 "It were a pity to spoil so merry an ancient 
 with powder and shot, eh, Billy? The world 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 117 
 
 is never too full of merry men. Shall we re- 
 frain from our obvious advantage?" 
 
 Billy nodded, and they dropped their guns 
 to the grass. 
 
 "Might just as well," said the other, "neither 
 one of 'em's loaded." Whereon he cocked his 
 own gun. 
 
 "Fairly beaten, Billy, fairly beaten!" The 
 tall man rocked, with a cackling laughter. 
 Then he rose to his feet with a ceremonial flour- 
 ish that sat most fantastically upon his water- 
 soaked, spotted and ragged apparel. "Sir," he 
 went on, "I take the honor of presenting to you 
 myself, whom the gods of chance and euphony 
 long since named Lingo Dan, and my com- 
 panion in campaigns against mischance, Billy. 
 We bow to a superior soul. We are outwitted, 
 and so early in the day, too, by your dear, good 
 self. You removed the shells before ever we 
 awoke ! A noble inspiration ; I could not have 
 done better myself. Will you not inform us 
 who it is so honors us ?" 
 
 "My name's Tim Held." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Held, we apologize, I vow to 
 you, we apologize most humbly. Here we 
 come, I suppose, trespassing upon your do- 
 mains, and offering you, almost at the outset 
 of our acquaintance, but scant civility. But it 
 shall be a lesson to me, Mr. Held, ever to sus- 
 pect a superiority of soul even when clothed in 
 khaki." 
 
n8 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "No khaki on me, Mr. Dan. Dead grass 
 color I wears, always, in the duckin' season o' 
 year. What's khaki?" 
 
 "A synonym, Mr. Held, for your own col- 
 ors. Dead grass? Much stouter Anglo- 
 Saxon, much better really. Will you have a 
 little Medford, Mr. Held? It's all the fates 
 have left us. Poor food, perhaps, yet it holds 
 warmth and light." He turned to Billy, "A 
 drink for Mr. Held, good William!" 
 
 With much profane reluctance, Billy pulled 
 a bottle from his pocket, and handed it to Held. 
 The latter took it, smelt at the rim, swept a 
 quick look at the others, and gulped the rum 
 down, with a fine smacking of the lips after- 
 wards. He was passing the bottle back again, 
 but Lingo Dan waved him to retain it. "I 
 will tell you how we came here. Listening- 
 is oft more dry than talking. Keep it to sus- 
 tain you against my being tedious. Though, 
 to tell the truth, the thing is absurdly simple. 
 We have driven our carriage, Mr. Held — but, 
 let that pass. The last of many mischances 
 stranded us upon this pleasant coast, with 
 nothing to call our own, save these guns, this 
 liquor and that immortal courage, Mr. Held, 
 of which one Henley has sung. We were in 
 a small boat; we came to shore at duslc; we 
 thought to find a habitable spot, so, beaching 
 the boat, we walked into these reeds and 
 marshes, and, to tell the bitter fact, we lost our- 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 HQ 
 
 selves; we are rudderless in a wilderness; all 
 creeks look alike, and one meadow is as brown 
 as another, one bunch of cat- tails just the same 
 as another. Well, Mr. Held we prayed to the 
 Good God — you should hear Billy pray, Mr. 
 Held, you really should! — to send us salvation 
 in the morning. And here you are, Mr. Held, 
 here you are. Thank the gods, Billy, for an- 
 swering our prayers!" 
 
 But of Billy's ensuing remarks it is safe 
 only to declare that they had nothing to do 
 with any gods, save the nethermost. 
 
 "And now, Mr. Held, will you not tell us 
 where we are? How near to the railway? 
 How near to a village, and telegrams, and all 
 the outer sentries of civilization?" 
 
 Held, before he answered, took another pull 
 at the rum. "Good old Medford," he mut- 
 tered into his beard. Then he lifted his eyes 
 to Lingo Dan. "If I tells you you're in Frog 
 Cove, near Pugg Harbor, and ten miles from 
 Old Pond Station, what better off are you? 
 I'll tell you something, Mr. Dan, the man 
 doesn't live, outside o' myself, that can take 
 you straight into yonder clump of cat-tails, and 
 take you safe out again. What have I shot 
 ducks over these marshes twenty years for, if 
 I don't know 'em like a book now, tell me that, 
 will you?" He shouldered his gun, and 
 walked towards the clump of reeds he had in- 
 dicated. "I'll show you something," he said, 
 
120 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 trudging ahead. The others following him, 
 walked side by side. "The rum works, Billy," 
 whispered Lingo Dan, "it works. A better 
 weapon than powder, sometimes. As we 
 know to our sorrow." 
 
 They crashed their way through what 
 seemed an impenetrable thicket of brown, 
 crackling reeds. The cat-tails were at least 
 two feet taller than even Lingo Dan; when 
 you looked up you gazed as if from a prison 
 upon the vault of sky overhead ; all else was a 
 narrow cage of brown. In the distance you 
 could hear the tide beating against the easterly 
 wind. Now and then the heavy rushing of a 
 flight of ducks cut the air over their heads. 
 Presently they found themselves before a hut 
 of rude planking. So low was the roof of it, 
 and so high the ambuscade of cat-tails, that 
 you did not see the hut until you almost stepped 
 upon its lintel. Held pushed open the door, 
 and showed them the cot, and the shelf that 
 constituted his furnishing. "Here," he said, 
 as he waved them to a seat on the cot, "is where 
 I live — most of the time. What with this, and 
 a good gun, and a boat — Lord love you, I'm as 
 happy as the run of folks. Heap more happy 
 than some, I'm thinking. I've solved the great 
 problem, you see, of how little it takes for a 
 man to live on. Look at me; do I look 
 starved? No. Well; I catch fish, and I dig 
 clams, and I shoot ducks; I've got God's free 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 121 
 
 air and light; in summer there's the sun and 
 the wind to cool me, and in winter there's drift- 
 wood enough on the islands here to keep me 
 warm as toast." He paused, and handed some 
 tobacco to his vistors. "Is a millionaire much 
 better off?" 
 
 Lingo Dan smiled slightly. "I have never 
 been a millonaire — in the actual," he allowed. 
 "But I admit that you are a very exceptional 
 person, Mr. Held. You have solved the secret 
 of content with the most elemental methods. 
 You have triumphed where the majority is ut- 
 terly blind. I, upon my word, I envy you. 
 And yet — and yet, do you never feel the need 
 of money, of human intercourse?" 
 
 Held put the bottle to his lips again, and 
 his head, at this swig, went back for quite a 
 long time. His eyes began to glisten. "Mon- 
 ey," he said, "what's money? Barrin' rum, 
 what'll it bring you? What's the use of it — 
 here ?" And he swept his arm in a circle that 
 took in the entire marsh. "If I wants a drink 
 a rum or so, all I has to do is drop a line to one 
 of the shooting gentlemen in town that knows 
 me. Then they comes to the hotel in New 
 Edinbro, or in Old Pond; and I guide them 
 out duck shooting. They gets the sport and 
 the ducks, and I gets the sport and the money. 
 As for society — give me ducks, Mr. Dan, give 
 me ducks. Some folks spend their lives study- 
 in' other folks; 'far's I'm concerned, I finds 
 
122 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 ducks a heap more interestin'. 'Ever get up in 
 the grey of the dawn, when there's fog on the 
 river and the marshes, and push your boat 
 through the sloughways and the ditches, and 
 jump the ducks as they're feeding? Ever sit 
 behind a blind of reeds for all the high-tide 
 hours and wait for the wind and the tide to 
 drive the ducks into your decoys ; see 'em swirl 
 about and around, and then drop, just like that, 
 paff , in front of your gun ? Ever sit in the twi- 
 light and wait for the evening flight of ducks, 
 your ears straining for the whista, whista of 
 the wings that you can't see till they're right 
 over you; or look for them to fly across the 
 moonlight? Ever get so you think you knew 
 just where this bunch feeds, or that, and then 
 lay for 'em, and have 'em fool you? Ever live 
 twenty years trying to circumvent their cun- 
 ning tricks and be as eager at the end as when 
 you were just beginning? Ever try any of 
 those things? No. I thought not. Don't 
 talk to me of people! Ducks is a heap more 
 exciting. Give me ducks, Mr. Dan, every time ! 
 Give me ducks !" 
 
 The old man's eyes were glistening more 
 and more brightly, and words came to him 
 with a rush and a riot that was sometimes too 
 great for his lips. As he took another pull at 
 the bottle, Lingo Dan, looked significantly at 
 Bill. Held set the bottle down upon the table 
 presently, and turned to hang up his gun. In 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 123 
 
 that instant Lingo Dan substituted an almost 
 full bottle of rum for the nearly empty one 
 that had been set down. "Good old Med- 
 ford !" murmured Held, wiping his lips again, 
 after another swallow. "Old Medford brings a 
 man's ambitions back, seems to me. I've not 
 lived here always, you know; oh, no, not al- 
 ways. Time was when I had money — and 
 thought money was the only thing in the world. 
 Lord, I'm wiser now. Suppose I envy the 
 brokers and the rich men's sons that come 
 down to Old Pond for the shooting, and hire 
 me to guide for 'em? Envy? Not much! 
 They're pursuing the problem I've solved, 
 that's the way I figure it out. If I wanted 
 money — good Caesar, it's easy enough to make 
 money! Easy enough! Haven't I had a 
 stock broker down here, right in this cabin, 
 drunk as a lord for ten days on end, and him 
 playing the market every day, through me go- 
 in' up to the telegraph office for him with his 
 instructions, and him clearing ten thousand 
 dollars just like — that ! And him drunk as a 
 sailor, or a fiddler, or any sponge what ever 
 was! And do you think I envied him the 
 money? Me, Tim Held? Bosh! I takes 
 gentlemen out shooting, and I has to be polite 
 and let them wipe my eye for fear they hire 
 another guide that won't shoot as straight as 
 I do, and that kind of politeness kind of hurts, 
 for I do hate to miss a duck just because it 
 
124 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 might make a gentleman jealous — but, mon- 
 ey !" Mr. Held confided his tremendous scorn 
 of the idea to the bottle beside him. 
 
 "Ten thousand dollars, you said?" Lingo 
 Dan's voice was tense and his eyes flashed 
 with a sudden resolve. 
 
 "That's what I said. Ten thousand. While 
 you could say Jack Ro-hic-binson. Gentlemen, 
 excuse me, I'm most 'xtraordinary sleepy. 
 Make yourselves perfectly at home. Better 
 stay, better stay; never find your way alone. 
 Find some pilot-bread on shelf. I'm — sleepy." 
 He slid to the floor, and his beard sank upon 
 his chest, so that he presented a rather pitful 
 spectacle; an old man, who had solved a won- 
 derful problem and yet had left a loophole to 
 one enemy. 
 
 "How far," Dan shook the old man by the 
 shoulder, "how far did you say it was to Old 
 Pond station?" 
 
 "Fair tide and fair wind, you're right there 
 now ; tide and wind against you it's five miles. 
 Lemme sleep. No use — your try in'. Never 
 find the river — get lost again. Lemme sleep." 
 And the next moment Mr. Held was asleeep. 
 
 Rum," observed Lingo Dan, sententiously, 
 as he regarded the prostrate figure of his host, 
 "affects different people differently. Some it 
 makes taciturn, some loquacious. Some it 
 turns honest ; others — naturally honest, it mak- 
 es rogues. I have given the subject some 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 125 
 
 study, and some experiment, Billy, in my time. 
 In this case I should say that we had before us 
 an honest old fellow, whom rum renders lo- 
 qouacious instead of leaving him, as he natur- 
 ally is, taciturn; whom it deprives utterly of 
 his usual principles of right and wrong, and 
 whom it robs, for the time, of memory. I have 
 seen them so before. So have you. You may 
 not have analyzed the matter, Billy, but I am 
 sure you agree with me, eh?" 
 
 "Damned waste of good rum, if you ask 
 me ?" was Billy's growling answer. 
 
 "I think not, Billy, I think not. It is merely 
 part of the capital we risk in a venture that the 
 maundering of this ancient mariner has sug- 
 gested to me. It is very simple. The man can 
 be kept, I am sure, in a sort of trance. With 
 diplomacy he can be guided to our ends. His 
 morals may leave him, but not his sense of to- 
 pography. That, as it chances, is our salva- 
 tion. For he is right, Billy, we could never find 
 our way to civilization out of this place. 
 We could be killed, and eaten, and the world 
 would be no wiser. Well — that makes it all 
 the simpler. My plan, briefly, Billy, is to have 
 the old fellow get one of his sporting, drinking 
 stock-brokers, come down for a bit of shoot- 
 ing. Eh, Billy, a bit of shooting?" 
 
 Billy considered the other's face thickly. 
 From long association with him he had ac- 
 
126 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 quired a certain foggy appreciation of his tor- 
 tuous introductions. 
 
 "Murder, d'y mean? And boodle?" 
 
 "Bah ! You should know me better ! Noth- 
 ing so foolish, nothing so primitive. Those 
 things always leak out ; I do not explain ; but it 
 is a way they have. Even in this sequestered 
 spot, I suppose, one could not sink a body so 
 deep but what some interfering tide would 
 wash it right into the heart of some fishing 
 village. I have, dear heaven knows, no super- 
 stitions, but I have noticed that in these mat- 
 ters there are agencies as mysterious as the 
 tides themselves. Besides.'' he smiled at Billy,, 
 as if he were making love to him, "there would 
 be far less profit in that. No; it is just — just 
 a bit of shooting. And wonderfully easy 
 shooting at that. As long as the rum holds 
 out. this old fellow" he kicked his foot in the 
 direction of Held "is our absolute tool. All he 
 need do is to write to one of his shooting pat- 
 rons; the man will arrive, we will — h'm — de- 
 tain him here, with the fine shooting and the 
 good cheer. And nothing, you see. Bill}-, noth- 
 ing need interfere with his usual habits of 
 speculating on the stock exchange. You 
 wouldn't deny a man a thing like that, would 
 you. Billy? Billy, Billy. Billy! Such shock- 
 ing language! How you do veil your affec- 
 tion for me. now and then, with the profanest 
 symbols! Upon my word — " He took Billy 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 127 
 
 suddenly by the shoulder, and the grip cannot 
 have been a light one for the other winced 
 under it, "Billy, sometimes you irritate me! 
 Don't you see? We'll make him speculate — 
 for us !" 
 
 A week later many of the moves that Lingo 
 Dan had marked upon his plan of campaign 
 hed been successfully made. Tim Held's men- 
 tal obliquity had been correctly guaged. It had 
 struck the old man as rather a good joke that he 
 should sit down and write to Mr. Richard Er- 
 ringham such a letter as would be sure, if that 
 well-known metropolitan and fast-living spec- 
 ulator, were not ill or out of town, to bring him 
 post-hast to Old Pond station. The liquor 
 with which he was being skillfully plied kept 
 him from a too great coherency of reflection, 
 while it by no means prevented him from in- 
 diting a scrawl that Mr. Erringham at once 
 recognized as characteristic and authentic. 
 "Mr. Erringham. Dear Sir :" ran the letter, 
 "there is a good flight of ducks on. Your ten- 
 guage is looking fine. Yours, Tim." That 
 was all, but when he received it, Mr. Erring- 
 ham, who knew the writer's laconic habits, 
 took a hasty look at the state of the market, 
 and then at the time tables. He was satisfied 
 in both directions. His interests seemed at a 
 tide where he could handle them as safely from 
 a distance as from his office ; his luck was pro- 
 
128 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 verbial and notorious, and had withstood both 
 the excessive sobriety of others and his own in- 
 temperance. There was a train which, allow- 
 ing for time to drive to his apartments, and 
 have his shooting-clothes packed, would suit 
 admirably. The train happened to be the Lim- 
 ited Courier, and there were a number of men 
 he knew in the buffet-car. With the prospect 
 of his partial holiday before him, he gave such 
 free reign to his instinctive conviviality that 
 when the local running between the Junction 
 and Old Point deposited him at the latter sta- 
 tion he was in a most comfortable condition 
 of artificial happiness. At the Pond Inn, 
 where he spent the night, and where Tim Held 
 was to meet him on the following morning, 
 he continued his imbibations so mightily that 
 when Mr. Held came for him there was little to 
 choose between them for fearful and wonder- 
 ful burlesques upon supersolemn sobriety. The 
 good people at the Inn merely smiled ; they had 
 seen the thing before, with exactly the same 
 players in the roles. They were accustomed to 
 the curious ways of gentlemen from town, who 
 came, sometimes, for a fortnight's shooting, 
 only to get disgusted and return after 24 hours, 
 or for the week end, ostensibly, yet lingered 
 in the marshes for a month. As for Lingo 
 Dan, when Billy protested, in blustering pro- 
 fanity, against allowing Held to go alone to 
 • bring Mr. Erringham to the marsh, he ex- 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 129 
 
 plained that he felt no qualms at all; Held 
 would go through the motions of his mission 
 from sheer use and habit; walking in a dream 
 of alcohol though he might be, he was yet sure 
 to walk in his old, familiar ruts; he would 
 descant upon the shooting to Erringham, lis- 
 ten to the other's rhapsodies about the fresh 
 air with polite composure, and never row, in 
 his journey down the river to the marshes, so 
 much as one superfluous stroke. 
 
 Certainly there was nothing in Erringham' s 
 reception of the two strangers to suggest that 
 he was anything but pleased. He was in a 
 mood that proclaimed "the more the merrier" 
 as his guiding text. He would be the last to 
 blame Tim Held for sharing the solitude of the 
 marshes, that was certain ; besides there would 
 be the more guns with which to attack the wily 
 enemy, the dusky, the red-head, the broad-bill, 
 and the dipper duck. 
 
 There had been a day's shooting in which the 
 webfooted enemy had, as it chanced, had de- 
 cidedly the best of the encounter. The most 
 skilful and sober of men are not always suc- 
 cessful in circumventing the cunning of ducks 
 in a region where the latter are, after all, wild 
 and scarce; when two of the guns are held be- 
 fore eyes that can scarcely see the sights, and 
 other two by men utterly unused to the flight 
 and habits of the duck, there is likely to be but 
 a small bag. All the more reason, therefore, 
 
130 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 for drinking, on the eve of that experience, to 
 a better day coming. 
 
 When the morrow came, there came with it, 
 in Erringham's mind, the craving for his wont- 
 ed speculation. His stimulated nerves told 
 him that he was infallible this day; he had 
 the curiously certain feeling that comes to 
 those believing themselves possessed of so- 
 called second sight. 
 
 "Have to play the market to-day, Tim," said 
 Erringham, "Feel it in my bones. You row 
 me to Old Pond, and I'll do the rest." He 
 tried to walk towards the boat, where it was 
 moored in the reeds, but his legs refused to 
 hold him up, and he slid onto the floor. He 
 laughed aloud. "Tim! Oh, Tim! This — in- 
 fernal cabin of yours is — umph — on the bias. 
 I'd be all right once I — umph — got in the boat. 
 But — umph — can't get to the beastly old tub. 
 You'll have to — umph — go in for me, Tim. 
 Done it before, you have." He lurched to his 
 feet again, and clung to the shelf in the wall. 
 "Where's the bottle?" he asked. 
 
 Lingo Dan put his hand on Erringham's 
 shoulder. "Look here, I'll help you along. If 
 you want the market played T'll go in to Old 
 Pond with Tim, and you and Billy here can go 
 take a crack at the ducks. We'll be back before 
 you have a chance to lose yourselves. Or you 
 can hide the boat in the Cove, put out the de- 
 coys on Back River, and wait for us. Fact is," 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 here he lowered his voice and almost whisper- 
 ed, "Tim's a little, well, under the weather, 
 don't you think?" 
 
 "Maybe he is," said Erringham. "Hadn't 
 noticed. Maybe he is. All right, we're all 
 friends. Here's the message, and the cipher 
 signature. So long!" 
 
 Lingo Dan gasped silently. He had not 
 thought the thing would be so easy. He had 
 been prepared for diplomacy, persuasion, al- 
 most for browbeating. And here the thing had 
 almost been flung at him! He picked up the 
 slip of paper, and cautiously steered Tim into 
 the boat. 
 
 The message read, briefly, that Erringham' s 
 partner was to buy Consolidated Collieries. 
 Only Erringham and his partner knew the 
 cipher that signed telegrams passing between 
 them, so there could be no question of these 
 instructions not being acted upon. Lingo Dan 
 laughed silently to himself as he considered 
 how simple it all was. As he and Tim rowed 
 the boat back to the marshes his eyes in fancy 
 beheld the quotation on Consolidated Collieries 
 risen, in the next 24 hours, from the 67 at 
 which the newspaper just purchased at Old 
 Pond showed it, to something fabulous. All 
 he would need to do then would be to wire, 
 with the same cipher signature, for some huge 
 remittance. If there were any cheques to be 
 signed — anything at all, indeed, to be signed, 
 
132 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 — it was fairly safe to say that Mr. Erringham 
 was in a condition to cheerfully sign his all 
 away without a murmur or a regret. Besides, 
 Dan magnanimously told himself, he would 
 really aim at nothing more than the profit this 
 present transaction was to bring. Mr. Erring- 
 ham, it was true, was in so amiable a state 
 that it might have been possible to get him to 
 sign a cheque over to him then and there, with- 
 out any trickery at all, but there would, Dan re- 
 flected, be no scent of danger, of real intrigue 
 about that. Such a scheme was without the 
 savor of science. Besides, Mr. Erringham 
 was, as he had admitted in his cups, none too 
 well off just now ; he had been playing on the 
 losing side for months, and his capital was 
 shrunk to a very small figure indeed ; he could 
 suffer little in the way of further losses, and it 
 was not until this present occasion that he had 
 really felt a keen sense of having struck a win- 
 ing streak. He had never touched Consolidat- 
 ed Collieries before ; this speculation in it, that 
 he was directing from the hidden wilderness of 
 a marsh, was his most desperate fight for his 
 financial life. Lingo Dan knew better than to 
 sap, by any hurried folly, the slender Erring- 
 ham capital. But once the great winning was 
 made — ah, that was quite another matter. 
 
 But, when the trip to Old Pond was made on 
 the following day, with a repetition of Erring- 
 ham's message, to buy more C. C. stock, the 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 133 
 
 newspaper showed that the price was now three 
 points lower. Lingo Dan calculated quickly. 
 He knew that there was a definite understand- 
 ing between Erringham and his partner as to 
 how many thousand shares were to be bought 
 or sold on each wired advice; his reckoning 
 told him that he decline of three points had al- 
 ready, if there was no recovery, made a terri- 
 ble inroad upon Erringham's capital. 
 
 But Mr. Erringham received the news very 
 jovially. He and Billy were sitting upon little 
 square boxes where the low tide had left the 
 meadow bare; the reeds hid them from view, 
 and they were alternately shooting at the de- 
 coys floating before them and increasing their 
 own holdings of alcoholic cargo. After each 
 drink they declared there were several wild 
 ducks sitting among the decoys; then they 
 would each let drive with both barrels and scat- 
 ter splinters from the decoys all over the water. 
 
 "Gone down, has it?" said Mr. Erringham. 
 "Never mind; luck bound to turn. Look at 
 those — umph — lovely ducks we shot. Look at 
 'em; ain't they got the loveliest manners — 
 umph — you ever saw. We shot 'em all, we 
 did. All the same, shooting ducks or playing 
 market; luck's with me — luck's with me, — me, 
 — umph — Erringham. You know Erringham 
 — umph — luck, don't you. 
 
 Nevertheless, this time, the famous Erring- 
 ham luck seemed asleep. Consolidated Col- 
 
134 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 lieries went steadily, slowly, fraction by frac- 
 tion point by point, down, down, until the day 
 came when Lingo Dan reckoned, in his cold- 
 blooded way that Mr. Erringham was a bank- 
 rupt. It was a bitter blow to him, but he would 
 certainly play the wise part now; he would 
 saddle himself with no further responsibilities. 
 There was no knowing what might happen. 
 When realization came to the bemuddled Er- 
 ringham there might be a tragedy, and ugly ru- 
 mors, and — well, in fine, it was better to be 
 going before the crash came. 
 
 He made a plan or two accordingly. 
 
 When Erringham reached for the bottle 
 next morning, it was empty. He roared with 
 rage. His nerves shook. His voice rose high. 
 But there was not a drop, not a drop. Lingo 
 Dan had seen to that. 
 
 "Got to have some," roared Erringham. 
 "Got to have it. What? No money! Oh — " 
 and he roared out an oath! He put his hand 
 into his pocket, and pulled out a twenty-dollar 
 gold piece. "Here, get me something to drink, 
 quick. And wire the firm to buy Consolidated 
 Collieries. Mad ? Who said I was mad ? You 
 do what I tell you, d'ye hear, Tim Held, and 
 you, too, Mr. Dan. What I want is — whisky 
 — don't you see the fix I'm in— don't you see? 
 'til I get it?" Indeed, there was on him the 
 sudden terror of a house that has lost its foun- 
 dations. His limbs shook with dread; he was 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 135 
 
 in the fearful condition of the drunkard who is 
 without the drink that he must needs "taper 
 off" on. 
 
 Lingo Dan hauled Billy into the boat with 
 Held and himself.. They shoved off, leaving 
 Mr. Erringham helplessly cursing. When 
 they reached the open meadow by the river- 
 shore, all the intricacies of the creeks past, Lin- 
 go Dan and Billy suddenly forced the boat's 
 nose to the bank, and lifted old Held to the 
 meadow. 
 
 The old man looked at the sun and the sky 
 in a dazed way, and then smiled maudlinly at 
 the two in the boat. 
 
 "No cover here," he said, "no cover at -all. 
 No ducks fool enough to come here." 
 
 "Oh," said Lingo Dan, "if you will pardon 
 my frankness, a pest on you and your ducks. 
 We have enjoyed your hospitality; but it be- 
 comes monotonous. We had intended some 
 celebration on the strength of your speculative 
 friend's success ; but his failures grow dispirit- 
 ing. Neither good old Medford nor equally an- 
 cient Monongahela can bolster up one's spirits 
 against such a succession of failures. We owe 
 you a deal in the way of information concern- 
 ing ducks, Mr. Held, but in the matter of du- 
 cats we have been shamefully deceived. You 
 led us to believe that your stockbroker was an 
 invariable winner, and here he has done noth- 
 ing but lose for a week or more. For no other 
 
136 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 reason did we linger in your marshy abode. Fie 
 upon you, Mr. Held, for your cruel deception. 
 Was it any way to treat two strangers, two bits 
 of human floatsam thrown upon your mercy? 
 Was it kind ? Was it just ?" 
 
 Tim Held did not understand the words 
 very accurately, but the tone of voice affected 
 him, and the liquor was potent in him. He be- 
 gan to weep. 
 
 "Fie on you, Tim Held, and you so old! 
 Your head is white, and your deeds so black! 
 Oh, fie, Tim Held!" 
 
 And they pushed off, leaving Held sitting on 
 the sodden meadow, weeping. 
 
 Two days later, in a city lodging-house, 
 Lingo Dan, reading the newspaper, started, 
 read again, and smilingly handed the sheet to 
 Billy, his finger touching a certain line. 
 
 The line read thus : "Consolidated Collieries 
 Soar. A fifteen point rise." And in the para- 
 graph below was mention of the fact that the 
 greatest coup made in this stock was to the 
 credit of Mr. Richard Erringham who had 
 been buying the stock for ten days past. 
 
 Lingo Dan sighed. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder," he said, "if the fool 
 gives old Held something out of his win- 
 nings." He sighed again. "Heigh ho. I wish 
 I had thought more of ducks, Billy, and not so 
 much of ducats." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHICH DWELLS UPON LINGO DAN'S METHOD OF 
 BEAUTIFYING THE SUBURBS 
 
 "Take notice, Bowlsy," said Finnegan, who 
 was conductor 432 in the company's books. 
 
 Bowlsy, with one hand still on the trolly 
 rope, looked over to where Finnegan' s head 
 was mysteriously bobbing. One of the cars of 
 the ocean service had just run in under the 
 shed and was discharging its passengers. An 
 astonishingly large number of pretty girls 
 poured out onto the stone flags of the termin- 
 us, followed by an almost equal number of 
 handsome, well-groomed young men. To 
 right and left they scattered, some making for 
 surface, some for elevated roads, some walking 
 briskly over toward the public buildings. Cars 
 came grinding and spark-spitting over the 
 curves, constantly discharging and taking on 
 their human complements. Gongs sounded the 
 start ; policemen strode back and forth amid the 
 crowd; the motormen swung their gloved 
 hands together against the cold, and from 
 overhead came the noise of the Elevated. 
 
138 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Well," said Bowlsy, with something of re- 
 sentment in his tone, "I don't see nothing 
 great." 
 
 "Yez saw the ocean car?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Then did yez not take notice that the 
 good-lookers always comes in bunches ? I tell 
 ye, me boy, if it was not for taking notice of 
 human nature, I would not be conductor on a 
 trolley car." 
 
 "Oh ho ; yis ! Yez would be a philosophist, 
 or the like of that. Oh, yis ! I doubt the su- 
 perintendent has no thought but what yez 
 ring up fares for a living, Finnegan. Will I 
 tell him that yez do it mostly as a favor and to 
 teach philosophy ? Oh ho, Finnegan !" Bow- 
 lsy blew on his fingers and danced a jig on the 
 platform of his car. He roared again with 
 tremendous gusts of laughter. "Oh ho, Fin- 
 negan, the philosophist !" 
 
 "Bowlsy, yez shame the service. Take no- 
 tice of the folks we gives a ride to, and ye'll be 
 wiser than yez are now. Take notice, I tell yez. 
 As sure as yez live, the good ones comes in 
 bunches, and so does the other lot. Yez get the 
 car onst filling up with nagurs and Chinee and 
 Dagoes, and its nagurs and Chinee and Dag- 
 oes to the end of the trip. But get a few likely 
 looking women in the car, and ye'll see the 
 swells coming in as if yez was a Fifth avenoo 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 139 
 
 stage. Have yez never taken notice of that, 
 Bowlsy ?" 
 
 "I dunno but what you're right, Finnegan," 
 said the other conductor, as he helped a wash- 
 erwoman with her bundle up the steps of his 
 car, "but sure I never took thought of it be- 
 fore. If yez say true, then there is laundries 
 and biscuit-shooters coming to me this trip. 
 Did yez see the fat one that I have to carry for 
 one fare." 
 
 "I took notice," said Finnegan, solemnly, 
 "and I should argue — " 
 
 But the gong sounded for Bowlsy's car to 
 start, and off it. went, jarring noisily over the 
 curves and spitting sparks in to the air over- 
 head. Bowlsy nodded at Finnegan, and the 
 latter climbed to his own platform, waiting his 
 turn. Thoughtfully he surveyed the interior 
 of his car. "I take notice," he said again, as if 
 he were still addressing Bowlsy, "that they al- 
 ways come in bunches." Then, at the signal, 
 he put his hand to the rope and released the 
 brake. Presently he was swinging along over 
 the bridge, with the river shining below him 
 and the lights on either shore twinkling like 
 the stars of a nethed world. 
 
 Just as Finnegan's car left the terminus a 
 tall man, who had been leaning against a pillar 
 the while the two conductors had been ex- 
 changing their little sallies, suddenly broke into 
 a luminous, lingering smile. "By jove !" he said 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 vigorously, "I believe the thing's feasible. Not 
 only feasible, but, as the hacks on the news- 
 papers say, both profitable and entertaining. 
 Thanks to Finnegan! A great man, Finne- 
 gan !" 
 
 And, still smiling, he left the place with 
 energetic, far-reaching strides. 
 
 The very next day he went to the offices of 
 the Trolley Company. The company's list of 
 conductors was full, but his name could go on 
 the waiting list. When the tall man gave his 
 name, the machine that stood behind the coun- 
 ter smiled faintly. "I see," said this machine, 
 "that you give your name in the — what I may 
 call the directory manner." And he wrote the 
 name in his book, carefully, thus : 
 
 "Lingo, Dan." 
 
 Several months afterward Finnegan and 
 Bowlsy happened again to be waiting at the 
 bridge terminus together. 
 
 "There comes the beauty car," said Finne- 
 gan, as the car came swinging in under the 
 shed. "Mornin', Dan !" The just arrived con- 
 ductor of what Finnegan had termed the beau- 
 ty car nodded and smiled. Finnegan watched 
 the thirty-odd well-dressed, good-looking 
 people of both sexes stream out of Dan's car, 
 and then nodded his head sententiously. 
 
 "Do yez mind, Bowlsy, how I have always 
 said the good ones comes in bunches, and the 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 141 
 
 bad ones comes in bunches ? There's no proof 
 needed now. There's Dan's beauty car to 
 prove it." 
 
 Indeed, the beauty car was known all over 
 the company's lines. How it was done, no- 
 body knew, but the fact was that, regularly as 
 clockwork, the car that Dan brought into town 
 between half-past ten and half-past eleven in 
 the morning was as full of beautiful women 
 and handsome men as a pomegranate is of 
 seeds. Outward bound the beauty car made its 
 trip about four in the afternoon. 
 
 The fame of the beauty car was not confin- 
 ed to the employes of the Trolley Company. It 
 spread all along the district through which 
 Dan's trip took him. The results were gradual, 
 but sure. The class of buildings improved no- 
 ticeably, and the drift of fashion turned in the 
 direction where good-looking human beings ap- 
 peared, as all the stories agreed, to be so plenti- 
 ful. The price of real estate went up. All 
 the little desolate shanties and their poverty- 
 stricken, ragged population disappeared. 
 
 Presently only fine villas flanked the tracks. 
 Beauty was begetting beauty. The suburb 
 through which Dan's car passed was presently 
 known all over the city as the home of the fin- 
 est beauties for miles around. The most de- 
 sirable bachelors moved to the streets giving 
 on to this trolley line. Following the bache- 
 
I 4 2 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 lors came dowagers with marriageable daugh- 
 ters. 
 
 To see the beauty car passing and arriving 
 was akin to watching the observation car of an 
 Empire State Express. Yet there was no dif- 
 ference, outwardly, between the beauty car 
 and any other car in the sendee of the Trolley 
 Company. The fare was the same. 
 
 The difference was the conductor of the 
 beauty car. He was tall, and his face was 
 strangely refined for one in his position. Yet 
 he had by no means the look of a man grudg- 
 ing doing work beneath his position. He was 
 constantly smiling; he seemed happy. The 
 more aristocratic villas sprang up beside the 
 trolley tracks, the more constant grew Dan's 
 smile. 
 
 Dan smiled, too, to think how childishly easy 
 was his system of filling his car with good 
 looks. He was, after all, merely acting on 
 Finnegan's philosophy. He picked up a pretty 
 girl or two, and the run of chance was always 
 that some swagger men appeared presently on 
 the next corner. Then, somehow or other, the 
 sight of these well-set-up males always at- 
 tracted other pretty women. So it went. As 
 for the ugly ones, the laborers, the peddlers, 
 the washerwomen — the great unwashed, in 
 fact — why, he simply never stopped for them! 
 Dan often laughed to himself to think how- 
 simple it all was. Two vigorous pulls at the 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 H3 
 
 bell, and his car went bravely past the cursing 
 section-men or the jabbering Chinamen, and 
 never stopped at all in its disdainful career un- 
 til it reached a corner where some pretty wom- 
 en or good-looking men stood. Oh, that was 
 too easy, too easy! But that, after all, was 
 mere entertainment. The profit was another 
 matter. Yet even that was entertaining. Dan 
 chuckled as he thought of it all. 
 
 On one rare night, when he got a holiday 
 that coincided with his motorman's night off, 
 the two sat together in a little room which 
 ooked over the East River. Dan held a sheet 
 of paper before him, and, in the intervals of his 
 meditation, offered commentaries. 
 
 "Billy," he said, "the thing becomes monoto- 
 nous. It is too facile, far too facile. More- 
 over, it is legitimate business; I do not over- 
 like the too legitimate. A little touch of rog- 
 uery adds charm, somehow, eh, Billy? And 
 yet the thing is certainly romantic. Billy, if 
 this present system of mine be not genius, will 
 you be so considerate as to define the article 
 for me? You can't? I thought not. Think 
 of what it is I am doing. I am, to all intents 
 and purposes, making a fashionable quarter out 
 of what used to be a slum. I have made the 
 beauty car one of the sights of the town. And, 
 incidentally — " he patted the paper before him 
 — "I have added to our little, little " 
 
 "Wad!" said Billy, gruffly. 
 
i 4 4 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Thank you! I loathe the word, but it 
 comes pat at times. Yes, it is a noble system, 
 truly. Thanks, first to Finnegan, and then, 
 Billy, to you. Were it not that you aided me 
 in disdaining to stop the beauty car for the 
 unbeautiful my method were impracticable. 
 But as it is " 
 
 He paused and looked wistfully out of the 
 window. "I assure you, Billy, sometimes the 
 tameness of the thing palls on me." He pen- 
 ciled for a moment on the paper before him. 
 "Why did the plan never strike anyone else? 
 Anyone could do it — anyone. I crowd my car 
 with beautiful women, and then I pack my back 
 platform with smart men, and then — oh, the 
 rest is child's play. I single out a man, I lead 
 him on to talk. After a day or so he begins 
 to ask me if I know who such and such a girl 
 is. I find out who he is. I arrange meetings 
 and accidents and appointements. Gradually 
 I know who is who for miles around. My car 
 becomes a marriage bureau, and I — Billy — I 
 am the director." 
 
 He got up and paced the floor in nervous 
 energy. 
 
 "And the commissions, Billy, are by no 
 means to be despised. The men pay well — oh, 
 yes; they pay well. They know I could take 
 the car past their noses any day I wanted to. 
 And each one of them thinks he is the only 
 one that I — h'm! — grant my favors to. Of 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 145 
 
 course, I never tax the girls. Chivalry forbids. 
 Although I will admit that in the case of a fat 
 dowager or so, with designs upon some hand- 
 some youth, I have relaxed my rule on this 
 score." 
 
 There was silence for a time, and then Dan 
 began again. 
 
 "I have a premonition, Billy, that the system 
 is about drained dry. That is why I give the 
 matter so much thought to-night. Notice these 
 figures; not bad for a year, eh? We might 
 have run more risk and done much worse, eh? 
 If the worst comes to the worst, we can — h'm! 
 — see a little life with that, eh? The fact is, 
 Billy, I see the end coming. There is a widow 
 — think of it, Billy, a widow — haunting me. 
 She is ruining the complexion of the beauty- 
 car. For weeks I avoided her. You may re- 
 member, Billy, the woman who was wont to 
 stand at the corner of the Park Slope Drive, 
 and past whom I always signaled you to fly 
 with such especial speed. A little woman, 
 with black, shiny eyes, and a most dogged chin. 
 I knew her at once for a woman of character ; 
 when the car sailed past her, she used merely 
 to smile thinly and look at me. Now she has 
 taken to walking to the starting point and get- 
 ting into the car before it starts. And she 
 watches me — oh, Lord, Billy, how she watches 
 me! I have not arranged a lovers' meeting 
 
146 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 these ten days past, but I have felt that wom- 
 an's eyes fixed on me." 
 
 "Stuck on you, I guess." Billy grunted his 
 suspicion. 
 
 "Perhaps. And all the worse. If she drives 
 me to bay, Billy, it simply means an end — an 
 end to the beauty-car." 
 
 "He puffed at his pipe, folded up some pa- 
 pers and went on. "We have enough to try 
 other climes with. We leave, moreover, with 
 the consciousness of benefits bestowed. I have 
 made various young people happy. I have 
 made smooth the trolley track of love, and I 
 have invented and perfected the Beauty Car." 
 He spoke the term in capitals. "When I go, 
 its secret goes with me. I might, of course, 
 were I some mere mechanical mercenary spirit, 
 go sell the story to the newspapers the moment 
 that my widow threatened unpleasantness. 
 For, of course, I know what will happen. She 
 will seek to coerce me with threats of taking 
 her story to the company. But if I merely es- 
 cape, if she finds I am no longer with the com- 
 pany, she has not wit enough to tell the tale. 
 I know her well enough for that. And so the 
 secret stays with us. We have enough — for 
 present cakes and ale, at least — and future gain 
 shall never tempt me to cut off my left hand 
 that my right may take to penny-a-lining." 
 
 Then they composed themselves to slumber. 
 ******** 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 I 47 
 
 A few weeks afterward Finnegan and 
 Bowlsy were doing a warmth-producing break- 
 down, side by side, in the company's barns. 
 
 " 'Twas queer about the beauty car," said 
 Finnegan. 
 
 "Yes, that it was," said Bowlsy. 
 
 "Comes in all gay and gorgeous, one day, 
 and the next 'tis filled with Irish biddies and 
 garlic-eating Dagoes, and stableboys with 
 smell enough of horses to make you think the 
 car was the Garden Horse Show week. And 
 the motorman and Dan both absent and re- 
 signed. 
 
 " 'Tis mighty strange !" 
 
 "And yet they say they went out, both of 
 them, with as clean a sheet as ever the com- 
 pany saw. All straight and trim and clean 
 and square. I do not understand." 
 
 "A clever man, was Dan." 
 
 "Yes; that he was. And, did I tell yez? 
 Yesterday I gets a letter. I takes no notice 
 of the postmark. There's nothing in it but a 
 twenty-dollar bill, and words like this : 'A 
 Christmas Present, to Finnegan, Philosopher, 
 from Dan, Practician.' Now, what the jim- 
 ny's 'practician,' Bowlsy?" 
 
 "I do not know," said Bowlsy. "Was the 
 bill good?" 
 
148 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Take notice," said Finnegan, and handed 
 up a twenty-dollar certificate. 
 
 " 'Tis good," said Bowlsy. 
 
 "Take notice," said Finnegan, stuffing the 
 bill into his pocket again, "it is the profits of 
 philosophy." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCERNING MURDER AND SOME SPECULATION 
 IN COMEDY 
 
 "Listen, Billy. Listen!" 
 
 From the adjoining room, a moment before, 
 there had come the noise of some one entering, 
 then an indefinite sound of a fall or a blow, 
 and now a something that was half moaning, 
 half laughing. 
 
 Still warning Billy to silence, Lingo Dan 
 stepped softly to the partition. "I knew," he 
 whispered, "that this pleasant device of mine 
 would serve us some day." He shifted a small 
 disk of wood, and applied one eye to the hole 
 in the wall. 
 
 Suddenly he stepped back, gripped Billy's 
 arm, and made for the door. "Quietly, Billy, 
 and pin his arms," he urged as they stepped 
 into the other room. 
 
 There was a second's scuffle, and then a pale, 
 starved-looking creature sat helplessly on Bil- 
 ly's lap. On the table in the gaunt room was 
 a lighted candle and a mass of manuscript tied 
 with black ribbon. The first sheet had been 
 torn off* and was half charred. Lingo Dan 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 was tapping the blackened sheet of paper on 
 the table. 
 
 "To think." said Lingo Dan. as if he were 
 addressing the room at large, "that we were 
 next door to a murderer ! 1 1 
 
 The man in Billy's grasp started weakly. "A 
 murderer?" he echoed querulously. "A mur- 
 derer?" 
 
 "Why, yes. a murderer. Some murder bod- 
 ies and some — souls. What's this, if not your 
 soul?" Lingo Dan lifted up the manuscript. 
 
 The other tried to laugh. It was a some- 
 thing uncannily like a sob. "I take it." he 
 said, "that you are more in practice as to bod- 
 ies. At any rate, this fellow's hands hurt 
 damnably." 
 
 "You may let him go, Billy." Lingo Dan. 
 the manuscript in his pocket, went to the door 
 and closed it tightly. 
 
 "And now sir — " 
 
 "Oh. cut it short." interrupted the owner of 
 the room. "And now. you are going to say. I 
 suppose, in some horribly stale phrase or other, 
 my money or my life! You can have both, for 
 they are neither of them worth a tinker's damn. 
 The only thing in the world that I once valued 
 is in your pocket. You are welcome to it. For 
 heaven's sake, take it and go. Perhaps the 
 ragmakers will buy it : it might make paper 
 enough, when my soul has been boiled out of 
 it, for some one to write my obituary on. Y\ hy 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 don't you go? Was it any business of yours 
 if I burnt the thing?" 
 
 "You will excuse this intrusion, my good 
 sir, when I have explained. W e have watched 
 you for weeks. We have seen you — never 
 mind how — burning the midnight candle, 
 fighting the bitter fight of creation, and we 
 have become interested. We knew when the 
 work was done, and we have wondered, since 
 then, how soon you would come home glowing 
 with victory. Just now we saw you accepting 
 defeat like a coward, and then — attempting 
 murder." He tapped the manuscript signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 "You have a turn for phrases. Are you a 
 writer, too?" 
 
 "I ? Qh, my soul — Billy, he insults us ! Are 
 you a writer, Billy?" 
 
 Billy's answer was a mere inarticulate grunt. 
 
 "Perhaps," the writer went on in his weary 
 voice, " you are burglars. You certainly look 
 it. I can easily imagine disappointed authors 
 taking to the most heartless crimes. Still I 
 fail to see where I am to profit you much." He 
 looked grimly about the room. "You note the 
 splendor of these furnishings. Such as it is, it 
 is unpaid for. If you decide to do away with 
 me — would you mind paying the rent? Per- 
 haps you are murderers? But there is no in- 
 surance on my life. And I have no interesting 
 disease that might make my carcass valuable to 
 
152 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 a hospital. Such as I have is a dreadfully 
 vulgar ailment." He spat as he spoke and 
 some faint fleck of blood showed on his lips. 
 "You see, a most prosaic case." He walked 
 up and down the room a couple of times and 
 then summoned up some show of fierceness. 
 "Why don't you go?" he said. "Do you en- 
 joy gloating? Are you realists? Is the suf- 
 fering of others a delight to you? Is — " A 
 gust of coughing came over him, and he fell 
 to a chair with his breast heaving between his 
 close shoulders and his hands gripping the 
 woodwork. His control went from him as the 
 coughing loosed the tension of his nerves, and 
 he put his head down suddenly and began to 
 moan. 
 
 "My play," he moaned, "my beautiful play !" 
 
 And then for a few moments it was still in 
 the room save for the sound of a man wheez- 
 ing in bitter pain. 
 
 "A play, you said? A play?" Lingo Dan 
 had come over to where the man sat, and had 
 put his hand upon his shoulder. "Why, then, 
 you mustn't lose all heart! Be a man, be a 
 man. Listen : You talked of murder and of 
 burglary ; well, we are all that, Billy and I ; 
 but, mark you, something more, we are, before 
 all else, gamblers. You want your play pro- 
 duced, and all the managers in town refuse to 
 stake themselves upon it, is that not true? 
 Well, what if Billy and I should choose to 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 153 
 
 speculate and take and put it on and stand or 
 fall, with you ?" 
 
 The playwright frowned and smiled and 
 frowned again. 
 
 "A fantastic jest," he said, "one does not 
 produce plays on wind and dreams." 
 
 "Most true. But, can you eat mere wind 
 and dreams? Again most true; you cannot. 
 If you will sup with us, in an hour or two — on 
 real food and real drink — perhaps you will be- 
 lieve me better. And, meanwhile, may I read 
 the play?" 
 
 "You are quite mad." The playwright 
 laughed. "All the rest of the world has been 
 most sane, it has refused even to read the play. 
 If I am to dine with you I might wish that 
 you postponed your reading until the meal was 
 over. I hate to dine with a man whose humor 
 has been spoiled. But have it your own way; 
 the play's in your pocket ; put it into your head 
 if you want to. All I want's food in my stom- 
 ach." 
 
 "But you must promise," said Lingo Dan, 
 with his hand on the door, "that there shall be 
 no more murder between this and dinner. No 
 soul-murder, no body-murder." 
 
 "Oh, said the playwright, reaching for a pair 
 of scissors, "I shall employ the interval in noth- 
 ing but dressing for dinner." And he began 
 to trim the ragged fringes from his cuffs. 
 
154 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 When they were again in their own room 
 Lingo Dan picked up a scrap of paper that lay 
 on the table. "Do you remember," he said, 
 "what we were discussing before that mercur- 
 ial person next door gained my attention?" 
 
 "Sure thing," said Billy, "we was figuring 
 up what to do wid the boodle.' 
 
 "Exactly. It is the greatest haul we have 
 ever made. Think of it, Billy, twenty thou- 
 sand dollars ! As we said before, it is enough 
 to retire on. We could afford respectability. 
 Let me think, what was it you said you would 
 prefer ?" 
 
 "Running a liquor-store." 
 
 "To be sure. That was your ideal. What 
 w r as mine again? Oh, yes; a cottage in the 
 country, with vines and roses, and good books, 
 and some one to play the violin for me now 
 and then, and a good brand of tobacco to color 
 the house as one colors a meerschaum. Or, 
 again, you may remember, we had discussed 
 the question of traveling far over seas, of de- 
 voting our lives to little philanthropies, of go- 
 ing, perhaps, to England, assuming decent if 
 fictitious names, and passing to the next world 
 as sober, beloved vestrymen. It is easy to be 
 respectable on twenty thousand dollars. 
 Against all this, however, you will remember, 
 Billy, that we had to consider the killing quiet 
 of the thing. Do you think we can stand 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 155 
 
 quiet? That was about the point we had 
 reached when — interrupted. -My alternative 
 was speculation. Did I understand you to say, 
 Billy, that if I decided on speculation you 
 would lose or win with me ?" 
 Billy grunted a "Yes." 
 
 "The man," continued Lingo Dan, "has but 
 a matter of months to live. Even you, Billy, 
 with your callousness, could see that. He is a 
 clever man; something tells me that. If his 
 play were produced his light would go out 
 smilingly." He sighed a little. "Billy, when 
 I was young — pardon me if I talk of ancient 
 history! — I had ambitions. I know what it 
 means when the frost touches them. The frost 
 is reaching for the one thing in this man's life 
 that he has thought worth while. Suppose we 
 speculate and keep the frost away? What do 
 you say? We might, you know, Billy we 
 might make a hundred thousand. There may 
 be a fortune in it for all three of us. To say 
 nothing of keeping the frost from that poor 
 fellow's final days. Do you follow me, Billy?" 
 
 "You mean, if de play wins, we'se all on de 
 sunny side, and if it's a frost it's a cold day 
 for us." 
 
 "Precisely, Billy. A most accurate sum- 
 ming up. And now, Billy, I shall read the 
 play." 
 
156 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 A week later Lingo Dan came into the room 
 where Billy sat. "It is settled," he said, "we 
 are embarked as impressarios. Our friend was 
 right, Billy, there was not a manager in town 
 would take the play. They are afraid of 
 it. It is is a satirical comedy, and most of the 
 satire strikes at the audience. It is brilliant, 
 it is erratic, it is not conventional. The man- 
 agers don't understand it ; what they don't un- 
 derstand they fear. Our friend — do you re- 
 member, Billy, that his name is Jermyon, and 
 that you must stop calling him 'the consump- 
 tive guy' — has written a play so good that it 
 cannot possibly succeed. And yet," as he saw 
 an oath coming to Billy's lips, "there is just 
 the off chance that the public may bite at a bait 
 it can't see through. We may make that for- 
 tune. Who knows? And think of the fever 
 of speculation, Billy. For we are in the game 
 now. Since nobody would take it as a risk, I 
 have guaranteed the risk. It is to be put on at 
 Weekman's Theatre. Presently you will see 
 the public prints announcing a new comedy, 
 'Fiornella,' by a new author. You will read 
 weird tales of Jermyon's ways of life; his ec- 
 centric pretense of poverty, and all that sort of 
 thing. We pay for that publicity, Billy, you 
 and I ; those are part of the stakes in this gam- 
 ble of ours. We pay, in fact, for everything. 
 We pay for the theatre, the production, the 
 costumes, the advertisements — everything. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 157 
 
 But, bless you, the public doesn't know that. 
 It thinks Manager Weekman has really been 
 clever enough to find a brilliant comedy on his 
 own account, and risk his capital on the ven- 
 ture. Ah, my good Billy, one can do almost 
 anything with money. One can put a play onto 
 the stage and afterward, if necessary," he 
 stopped and smiled to himself as if at a tender 
 thought, "one can even buy the semblance of 
 prosperity." 
 
 Billy went on smoking and looking out of 
 the window. 
 
 "I wonder, Billy," Dan went on presently, 
 "if he will live to see the play. Has he been 
 coughing today?" 
 
 "To beat the band," was Billy's affirmative. 
 
 "Poor fellow. Well, it of tens happens so. 
 He has put himself too much into that play; 
 some of his body and some of his soul is there. 
 vV How shall a man's frame be strong when he 
 has spent so much of himself? The way to 
 success does not lie there, nowadays ; the thing 
 to do is to husband your little grain or two 
 of talent, and sow it on ground prepared by 
 flattery and tilled in sycophancy, water it with 
 the mediocrity that will be understood by the 
 vulgarians, and give it the sunshine of your 
 toadyism to the conventions. That is the way 
 to succeed in art, and in life. I'm sure you- 
 agree with me, Billy? Eh? Ah, yes; I see; 
 the excess vigor of your profanity proves that 
 
158 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 you hold my views exactly. Were ever two 
 people so alike in points of view as we, Billy?" 
 
 It was some ten days after the first night 
 of "Fiornella," but the memory of that occa- 
 sion was still vivid. 
 
 As the curtain went down upon the closing 
 scene a sudden tumult of applause went surg- 
 ing through the theatre. Men looked at each 
 other and smiled and flushed, as they beat their 
 hands together, and only the women stood in 
 wondering amaze. For the women had been 
 sitting for two hours in utter daze ; to them the 
 brilliant humor on the stage before them was 
 all a lurid tangle of absurdities. But the men 
 applauded fiercely, and the darkest corners 
 rang with the cries for "Author !" 
 
 They had brought him on in an invalid's 
 chair, and then, for the first time, a sudden 
 sympathy had come to even the women's eyes, 
 and the smiles and flushings of the men had 
 given way to a great surge of genuine emo- 
 tion. As the chair was wheeled to the centre 
 of the stage, and the jaded first-nighters saw 
 the white figure of the slender creature who 
 had wrought so strong a comedy that they 
 could not understand it, old men began to 
 search their memories for an equally affecting 
 sight. When Jermyon put up his hand at last 
 you could have heard the swinging of a wom- 
 an's fan. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 159 
 
 "I thank you," he said, simply, "This is what 
 I have lived for." 
 
 And then the theatre had been emptied of its 
 crowd, with much talking, and whispering, and 
 laughter. And all the critics had smiled at 
 each other in a furtively cruel way, and the 
 men had looked at their wrecked gloves with 
 a smile as if they had something in mind that 
 was atonement for all the torn gloves of a year. 
 
 That night, very late, there had been a sup- 
 per in Jermyon's room, and he had been a very 
 fountain of laughter and brightness, and he 
 had asked Lingo Dan again and again how he 
 had ever managed to persuade Weekman to 
 take the piece, and how he was content, now, 
 to die. 
 
 And Lingo Dan had talked much fantastic 
 nonsense about plays and about the public, and 
 trodden frequently on Billy's foot, because 
 Billy was drinking too much champagne and 
 occasionally making remarks that Jermyon did 
 not understand. 
 
 And since then there had been eulogistic no- 
 tices cut from the papers and brought to Jer- 
 myon day by day. The excitement of that 
 night had reacted, and he was sinking hourly 
 nearer to the end. Yet if his body waned his 
 soul glowed as it never had before. He was 
 all dreams for "Fiornella;" he thought of it 
 bringing his name to immortality; he was full 
 of wondering optimism, as he scanned the dajly 
 
i6o 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 box-office receipts — wondering at the public's 
 being so much more intelligent than he had 
 supposed. 
 
 And now a doctor had just left his room and 
 was talking, in the adjoining chamber, to 
 Lingo Dan. 
 
 "Another hour or so is all." The doctor put 
 on his hat and went out. 
 
 Lingo Dan turned to Billy. "It seems cruel, 
 Billy, but I am glad our little mummery is soon 
 too end. My nerves are failing under the 
 strain of so much forgery and so much men- 
 dacity. And yet, think what we have done, 
 Billy. We have given a beautiful imitation of 
 a successful play! Has it not been a delight- 
 ful speculation? Think what we have learned 
 about the purchasing power of money ! How 
 easy it is to ape success ! To stimulate the ap- 
 plause of a first-night is a bagatelle. To bias 
 the critics is a harder matter. But, it can be 
 done. Not grossly, stupidly, Billy, by mere 
 money in hand, or mere dining and wining. 
 Oh, no. Today's finesse is finer in these little 
 things. When I wanted a critic to praise 
 'Fiornella' I bought one of that critic's plays 
 first, or promised to produce it; they all have 
 plays somewhere in some shamefaced hole. 
 Yes, Billy, you can do all those things — but 
 one thing you cannot do, not even with money : 
 you cannot make the paying public, come to 
 your play if they refuse to like it, J have 
 
LINGO DAN l6l 
 
 forged the box-ofr]ce statement for Jermyon 
 every day, and he thinks of nothing but full 
 houses every night ; but, Billy, you and I know 
 that if we had not given tickets away as in- 
 dustriously as a new paper gives away sample 
 copies the performers in 'Fiornella' would have 
 played to the orchestra. I have deluged the 
 newspapers with the most startling stories that 
 even a press agent ever achieved in this town: 
 but — we lose, Billy, just the same, we lose. 
 
 "We have chosen to gamble, Billy, and we 
 have lost. To your little rumshop, and my 
 little cottage, we have preferred the hazards of 
 speculative promotion. And — we lose, we — " 
 
 There was a faint cry from the next room, 
 and the two went in silently. Jermyon was 
 gasping and struggling for breath. He beck- 
 oned to Lingo Dan. 
 
 "Your hand," he whispered. 
 
 "Cheer up, old man," said Dan, "cheer up. 
 This will pass." 
 
 "No; this is the curtain. But I don't care. 
 I die; but 'Fiornella' will go on. Won't it, 
 Dan; go on, and make you rich? I make you 
 heir. The taste of its success is sweet enough 
 for me; death can't take that away." He lay 
 still for a minute or so, and then he spoke 
 again, "You're not sorry you speculated, 
 Dan?" 
 
 "Sorry, when I see your smile, and when 
 I count the daily profit — " 
 
l62 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "And you're not sorry, Billy?" 
 "Sure, no." 
 
 "You kept me from murder once, Dan. And 
 now you've given back my soul and introduced 
 me to Happiness, and what have I done for 
 you? I wish I could do something before I 
 go. The money's nothing. You're welcome 
 to that, but I don't believe you care. All I 
 can do is say God bless — " 
 
 There was a choking and a shivering, and 
 the eyes stared ghastly in their sockets, and 
 then the author of "Fiornella" lay dead. 
 
 It grew dusk and still the men by the bed- 
 side never stirred. Then, suddenly, Lingo 
 Dan got up and turned his pockets inside out. 
 
 "Behold the fortune 'Fiornella' made," he 
 laughed. 
 
 "All gone?" asked Billy. 
 
 "Every cent. We stand today just where 
 we did — before we foolishly thought of retir- 
 ing from our activities. We have gambled and 
 we have lost. And yet, perhaps, we won." 
 
 "Won? How?" There was vast disgust 
 in Billy's tone. 
 
 Lingo Dan took Billy by the arm, and lit 
 the candle by the dead man's bed. 
 
 "He almost blessed me, Billy." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 IN WHICH THERE IS A GLIMPSE OF ARCADY 
 
 Against the roar of traffic over the crowded 
 granite the man's words were impotent. You 
 could see his lips move ; the swing of his right 
 arm waved monotonously in the memory, per- 
 haps ; for the rest, his was but a solitary figure 
 in the street-mass, unheeded, unimportant. 
 
 If you stood still and listened, you could 
 catch the few words he drawled out now and 
 again. "Three pairs for a nickel; 5 cents for 
 three pairs." And the black leather strips pen- 
 dant over his arm emphasized his phrase with 
 a mild insistence. 
 
 However long the curious might pause and 
 observe, it was rarely, indeed, that any reward 
 came to both their endeavors; the man who 
 had seen this gaunt figure, this lace-peddler, 
 actually achieve a sale was hard to find. 
 
 It was a day of spring. The sun glistened 
 on the puddles the night's shower had left in 
 the streets. Something soft, something of a 
 
164 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 caress was in the air. The sky-scraping build- 
 ings of the town seemed to be preening them- 
 selves for their summer's flirtation with the 
 sun. 
 
 The swinging of the black laces, and the un- 
 heeded intoning of the peddler's war cry sud- 
 denly ceased. "Hallo, friend William!" he 
 said. • 
 
 The individual addressed gave a curt nod. 
 His physical endowments were on a par with 
 that nod; he was closely knit; shortnecked, 
 stumpy. He, too, had a bunch of black laces 
 hung over his arm. 
 
 "And how," continued the tall, thin individ- 
 ual, who had first spoken, "how have the Fates 
 been pleased to disport themselves today ? On 
 a day like this, when all the air seems like a 
 kiss, surely even the Dread Three must feel the 
 impulse of kindness, surely " 
 
 "Aw, stow it! I ain't made a sale this 
 whole d — d morning, an' you know it!" 
 
 "Do I, indeed, Billy, do I, indeed ? The ex- 
 cess of your emphasis, my dear companion, im- 
 pugns the excellence of your veracity. How 
 — tell me ! — how should I know the slender 
 progress of your luck? Perhaps, you would 
 infer me to have gauged your status by my 
 own misfortunes? Ah, well — I confess." He 
 sighed, smiling. He stepped down from the 
 doorway that had held him: He put his hand 
 on Billy's arm. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 165 
 
 "Suppose," he said, with a whimsical twist 
 of the lips, "that we leave for a while the scene 
 of our stupendous toil. Suppose we tread a 
 measure on the primrose path!" He heaved 
 his narrow shoulders forward, drinking in a 
 long drain of the soft spring air ; then, putting 
 a lean hand to his companion's elbow, he 
 sauntered off with him. 
 
 As they passed, even in those harried thor- 
 oughfares an occasional smile followed this 
 curious twain. The one so thin, so fantas- 
 tically pale, so like some haunting memory of 
 Don Quixote and Dick Turpin rolled together ; 
 the other so squat, so animal, so ugly. The 
 one with such curious droppings of a stilted 
 eloquence that yet unmistakably rang of the 
 gentleman, the collegian ; the other of a dumb- 
 ness broken only by excursions into the pro- 
 fane or the vulgar. No wonder people smiled 
 at them! 
 
 Presently they were come to a grassy space 
 that lay before the water's edge. They found 
 a bench ; they sat clown. With a sigh of con- 
 tent the taller man stretched his long legs out 
 to the growing grass, locked his fingers at the 
 back of his head and gazed out to the farther 
 waterways. 
 
 "Heigh ho!" he said softly. His eyes had 
 the far-seeing stare, the film of dreaminess. 
 "Billy," he went on, "did you use your eyes 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 . today? Did you see the procession of beauti- 
 ful human animals ? Did you note the Spring- 
 shining in their faces, dancing in their sinews? 
 Did you? No? Ah — Billy, you lack, I fear 
 me, the proper eye of the Beholder. To let 
 the ugly go ; to see only the fair things of life ; 
 how delicious — and how difficult! And yet, 
 once — " He stopped and smiled upon his 
 companion. "You may scarce believe me, 
 Billy, but today as I saw the sunshine, and 
 the fair women, it came like a leap into my 
 blood, the old, old, springtime impulse of dear 
 youth, the which," he added more softly, "is 
 Love!" 
 
 Billy growled and attempted another posi- 
 tion. "Hell," he remarked, "but these benches 
 is hard!" 
 
 "Why," the other went on, heedless of 
 Billy's inattention, "must it be only Youth that 
 turn to love? Why is there for us who are 
 touched by grayness only Memory? Ah, well, 
 not all of us have even — that! I, at least — 
 Ich habe gelebt und geliebet! — and on a time 
 I have been king in Arcady. Have I ever told 
 you of that ? It was — ah me ! — how long ago 
 that was ! 
 
 ******** 
 "It was the year I came of age. 
 "The world was sweet to me. When one 
 has youth, and when the land of books lies 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 167 
 
 just behind, and there is coin enough to stave 
 of! care — it's little of the darker sides one 
 thinks about. I had the taste for travel; the 
 closeness of the college walls had sharpened 
 it. I went abroad. 
 
 "What does it matter where it was ? Perhaps 
 it was in Schwalbach, when the wild straw- 
 berries blushed loudly for the picking; perhaps 
 it was at Eisenach with the chimes of the 
 Wartburg singing along the dusk; perhaps it 
 was on the Corso or on Prince's Street. What 
 would it profit you to know ? 
 
 "But it was May, I know ; the lift of spring- 
 was on the breeze; the blossoms drooped over 
 the hedges, and the scent of flowers hung 
 over the earth. 
 
 "There was a corner where the acacias fell 
 beyond a wall so that they made a archway 
 for the path. I was idling on, thinking of a 
 melody. And then, suddenly, under the white 
 acacias came a vision, a dream! 
 
 "Ah, it is so long ago! But how vividly I 
 can still see her ! A vision in a wonderful bit 
 of a gown, all black and white, with little white 
 cuffs ; with a hat of a daintiness I could never 
 describe ; with the pinkest cheeks ! She carried 
 a frilled and fluttering parasol; it came like a 
 halo behind her. 
 
 "And young! Dear God, how young she 
 was ! I think it is forgiven me now, the auda- 
 city of the boy that then was I. How shall the 
 
i68 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 eyes of One-and-Twenty pass a woman and a 
 fair one coldly by? The blood went spouting 
 up to redden my cheeks; I felt my eyes grow 
 dim as she came nearer. Besides, I could have 
 sworn that her eyes, too, smiled a little. At all 
 events, before those eyes had passed, I — 
 Heavens, the dear folly of it ! — I lifted my hat ! 
 
 "Not boldly, you know, not with the brav- 
 ado of impudence. No — there must have been, 
 I suppose, some hint of worship in my face; 
 or else — how easy for her to have frowned 
 and passed and shuddered! But no; she 
 smiled, even as she gave rebuke. 
 
 " T do not think,' she said (and sometimes 
 in my dreams I still hear that voice!) 'that I 
 know you.' 
 
 " 'A misfortune,' I blushed, 'that you can 
 do much to rectify.' 
 
 " 'And so you think it a misfortune?' 
 
 " 'A very grievous one. If I — ' I stopped. 
 I could not say it. It would sound like an 
 empty shell, a hollow compliment, though the 
 blood in me leaped with its sincerity. 
 
 " 'Yes, if you — ' Through a lifetime of 
 Weltschmerz I can still see her smiling encour- 
 agement. 
 
 " 'If I were asked what fortune was, I 
 should say it was to know you and — be liked 
 by you.' 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 169 
 
 "She laughed a little. 'You are extrava- 
 gant/ she said. But she laughed. And I was 
 walking beside her, tremulously happy, keenly 
 conscious of her smiling lips, her laughing 
 eyes, the proximity of her gown, the faint per- 
 fume of her lace. 
 
 " 'It is very absurd of me to allow you to 
 accompany me,' she said, presently, looking 
 up at me. 
 
 " 'It is never absurd to dispense charity,' 
 said I. 
 
 "Past the lawns and the gardens we walked ; 
 she full of roguish playfulness, I blindly, fool- 
 ishly bathed in the mist of a devotion. 
 
 "She stopped as we came to a fountain that 
 played over some lazy goldfish. 'Of course/ 
 she said, though she still smiled, 'we will never 
 see each other again. For a whim I, instead of 
 frowning and raising my eyebrows, I — ' 
 
 " 'You were merciful/ I interrupted. 'And 
 as you have been merciful once, why not con- 
 tinue so ? Why am I not to see you again ?' 
 
 " 'It is impossible, unthinkable. Besides — ' 
 She read, or thought she read, the romantic 
 dreams in my young brain, 'will it not be much 
 more delightful to leave the episode here, just 
 as it is, a mystery ?' Again the ripples showed 
 upon her lips. 'A pleasant mystery,' she added. 
 
 "She stood there, leaning on her parasol, 
 one foot on the stone ledge about the fountain. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 I can see her now. How fair she was ! And 
 how inevitable that I should refuse to shut my- 
 self out from the hope of seeing her again, I, 
 who was young and so full of dreams ! 
 
 " 'No/ I said, 'if I may, I must see you 
 again.' 
 
 " 'Supposing,' she said, scratching the point 
 of her parasol about the graveled walk, 'that 
 I were engaged, or married — or anything 
 dreadful. It would be wrong, would it not, for 
 both you and me to see each other again? 
 You do not know who I am — ' 
 
 "Again I interrupted her. Youth can be so 
 rude, even in its compliments ! 'I know you 
 are the most beautiful woman I have ever 
 seen, and the most delighful !' 
 
 "She looked down, and now, as I recall the 
 thing, I think she sighed. 'It is a pity,' she 
 went on, 'that one cannot keep one's illusions. 
 Take my advice ; keep this one at least ! Never 
 see me again ; keep the memory as it is.' 
 
 "But I protested fiercely, and in the end she 
 allowed me to know that she might walk this 
 same path on the following day. I was not to 
 watch wither she went after we parted; so 
 much of mystery she insisted upon. 
 
 "There came, thereafter, a month of heaven. 
 A heaven in which there was the allurement 
 of the mysterious, perhaps even the forbidden, 
 and the charm of an ever growing fascination. 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 171 
 
 Sometimes we would go together to the Public 
 Gardens and hear the band from the Jaeger- 
 Regiment. Sometimes I took her rowing 
 down the river. Always she treated me with 
 something of humorous gentleness. It was 
 maddening, even though it was a happy mad- 
 ness, to feel that I was no nearer to penetrating 
 the mystery. Why could she not tell me who 
 she was, I asked myself. 
 
 "Ah, if Youth but knew ! Why could I not 
 have believed her, when she said it would be 
 better to leave the matter just a pleasant mem- 
 ory? Why not? Ah, how could I, when she 
 stood before me, with the velvet glamor in her 
 eyes, and the sunshine in her smile? Youth 
 has such wistful eyes, such rushing blood! 
 
 "Besides, to know such a wonderful girl as 
 this and give up all hope of winning her for 
 one's own, it was unthinkable! Her talk was 
 so brilliant, her jests so many, her tenderness 
 so sweet ! 
 
 "So I went on seeing her, day after day, 
 until one morning in July she said to me, quite 
 gravely : 
 
 " 'Well, our little play is over.' 
 
 "I felt my blood rushing to my face and then 
 receding, leaving it white and tense. 'Our 
 play?' I repeated, tonelessly. 
 
 " 'Yes,' she said, 'it has been a comedy we 
 have played, you and I, and the end is here. 
 
172 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 Oh, how I tried to keep you from it; how I 
 tried! But — well, you must promise me that 
 the comedy shall end in laughter, as it began.' 
 
 "I said nothing; I waited. 
 
 " %' she went on, 'have been most to blame. 
 I should have frowned; not smiled. But it is 
 hard to frown — sometimes. And you — you 
 have enjoyed being with me?" 
 
 " 'It has been heaven !' I said. 
 
 " 'You must not say such things,' she de- 
 clared. 'It only makes the last scene harder 
 for me. How I wish you had followed the ad- 
 vice I gave you, that first day, and left the rid- 
 dle unassailed ! How shall I ever make atone- 
 ment?' She looked me over wistfully. Sud- 
 denly she put her gloved hands on my shoulders 
 and kissed me. 
 
 "Ah, bon Dieu, if I live to be a thousand, I 
 shall feel that kiss, and hear the music of it 
 to my dying day! A man tastes one such 
 in his lifetime, and many go to their graves 
 without even so much. 
 
 " 'He would forgive me,' she sighed, as if to 
 herself, as she turned ; and then, to me, with a 
 sad little laugh, 'It is to remember me by. To- 
 morrow I go away. And you may not follow. 
 I go away — with my husband, my husband, 
 whom I love.' 
 
 "The world was a mist. Her kiss burned 
 on my lips; her words in my ears. So it had 
 
LINGO DAN 
 
 173 
 
 come, the curtain to the play ! I seemed not to 
 feel it, somehow; she was holding out her 
 hand; I took it; she said goodbye smilingly; 
 even so I echoed her. 
 "She was gone. 
 
 •"I walked to the Gardens. The band was 
 playing; I only heard her voice. The fashion- 
 ables were strolling up and down; I only saw 
 her face. The flowering bushes brushed my 
 face; I only felt her kiss. 
 
 "Perhaps, if I had not gone thither, to that 
 public place, I might have wept. In one's 
 youth, one can do so many brave, so many 
 foolish things. 
 
 "Why should I tell how long, how much 
 I mourned? Or if I accused her — no, I think 
 I ever accused only myself. As I looked back, 
 there was not a look of hers, not a tone of her 
 voice, that I had seen or heard, that her hus- 
 band might not have been by to see and hear. 
 I knew now what she had meant when she 
 murmured, 'He would forgive me.' And yet 
 how, in some moments of anguish, I hated that 
 man ! 
 
 "And so — the dream was past, the vision 
 fled. But the memory — ah, the memory is as 
 fresh as if it had been yesterday. Through all 
 the after years there has come to me, ever and 
 again, the memory of that month that I lived 
 in Arcady, and all my life — 
 
174 
 
 LINGO DAN 
 
 "Ah, well — for me, there has only been one 
 woman in the world. She showed me heaven 
 for a moment ; she kissed me." 
 
 For some seconds longer he looked staringly 
 into the past. Now he turned to Billy. "You 
 are a delightful conversationalist, Billy," he 
 said, "you listen so well. Eh? I beg your 
 pardon! Oh — h!" He smiled and stretched 
 himself out along the bench. 
 
 Billy went on snoring. 
 
=THE 
 
 IMITATOR 
 
 By PERCIVAL POLLARD 
 
 Of this key-novel, published anonymously in 1902, some copies 
 of the first edition still remain. 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 "Whimsical, brilliant, absurd." — The Bookman. 
 
 "The keenest, cleverest bit of social satire that has ap- 
 peared for a long time. * * *" — Philadelphia Times. 
 
 "Clever, daring, and epigrammatic." — The Neiv-Torker. 
 
 "The author deserves the thanks of the reading world for 
 his presentment of the new wrinkle in our national costume. It 
 may do us good to see ourselves as others see us." — Chicago 
 Journal. 
 
 "The boldest, and withal, the sharpest 'skinning' that 
 has been issued in this country since the days of the old pam- 
 phlet and lampoon. Frankly, it simply takes the hide off its 
 victim. * * * The first victim is immediately recognized 
 as Harry Lehr, the petted darling of society; the second is 
 H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, and the third is Mansfield * * *" 
 — Kansas City Journal. 
 
 "If its setting is hateful — life in New York — its handling 
 is uncommonly delicate and fine, its plot peculiarly ingenious, 
 its love story of rare beauty." — Charles F. Lummis. 
 
 Price, $1.25. 
 
 William Marion Reedy 
 
 . PUBLISHER ======== 
 
 SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI 
 
RARE BOOK 
 COLLECTION 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 AT 
 
 CHAPEL HILL 
 
 Mystery- 
 Detective 
 P355