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14 of reasoning would be perfectly rational; but, being Valda's father, the whole thing resolved itself mi.. about the most illogical and absurd nonsense to be imagined! NO she must be} in all over again; and she did. The two villain.-, then, had done everything she sai<l they did; but without her father They had signed his name to those telegrams, exactly as she, had divined from the first. A woman's intuition is a thousand times better than reason, anyway. They had signed his name to the telegrams. They had" in some way — it didn't make much difference how — discovered the Spitfire's private cipher code. They had used it as a blind. They had— < >h, wait ! That one tele-ram, in answer to her own, saying, "Don't be an idiot. Do as I tell you," — that was just a wee bit too intimate for forgery. It was not i asignature.it was fact! Nasty . incontestable fact ! It implicated the old gentleman again; bu there ought to be lots of ways to get him >u1 oi h It was illogical ever to have put him in Ah! she had it! How simple! Her father didn t know about the robbery. H>- thought it was jusl ordinary smuggling. She would admit smuggling, because she had known him to do it twice; but robbing a poor fellow of his belt— preposterous! These- two men had deceived him! Lied to him! And speaking of liars, George C. Brown— to revel in slang for once— not only took the cake, but ate it. every crumb! That man's sense of honor was about the lowest, most contemptible thing she had >ver dreamed of. To think of him spending his en tire young life in deceiving simple hearted women who "hadn't done a single thing but try to economize and save a little duty on their own property. She could understand perfectly how such frivolous, weak minded creatures might be taken in by him. because he was handsome, even if he did laugh a; them afterward— which, by the by. was a most un gentlemanly thing to d ■ No. there hadn't been any crime ai all! That was the way of it! This liar had manufactured the whole thing! When she thoughi of his bare faced impudence, her cheeks burned with shame and ra^'e When she thought how Ik- had wilfully cast suspicion on her father's friends,— these two respect able and almost entirely honest gentlemen, — she longed to box his >• >: - hard. As for his disrepu table pn ifessii m i if w- urn ing secrets out of people — well, it was simply unbearable! Sympathy was his long suit, was it ? He had expected to win her over with his cr >co dile tears and his da» ing master bowings and scrapings! Well, thank goodness there was some intelligence left in the world, after all! VALDA sighe 1 Yes, it was the only s >lu tiun, pitiful bul true The man was a profes sional scamp, — de< ci' ing people for .1 salary. Bul . oh! howcouldhe? Think <.f his mother! No, his mother was dead. She wasn't ' That was a lie too! Everything he said was -,i lie! He was nothing but a heartl conceited, vain be But if only he hadn'l bowed like that! And ii only his hair didn't up, as it certainly did, all over his perfectly shaped head! It w 1 fair for a man's hair I • curl by itself, anyway, when a p >or woman had t' > spend hours and h< >urs and hours with hoi tongs and a temper, or else d 1 ir up in papers which make you i > ■'. 1 perfe I fright and arc so abominably lumpy to sleep in And, con cerning lumps, how did Mr. Morson gel his lump, to which he had referred so humorously a- Exhibit A? She herself had noticed one of the tugboal men with a coal shovel in his hands This might cer tainly l>e a logical origin of the contusion, and— But no! Mr. Morson's lump has stitches in it,— stitches that must have hurl him frightfully No wonder he had be •: c faini .-.Si- | 1 fellow! Anybody bul .< very brave person would have screamed. Valda started, her keen powers of perception re ceiving a shock. Tin- weakest and most improbable part of Morson's story had embraced the crazy in cidents immediately attendant upon that lump; yet now, in the cold, calm light of reason, it !•••• ame the very strongest part of the torv — strongest be cause of its simplicity of fact Given a head hit hard enough, and thai head would bleed Results, perfectly natural: Wound— doctor— stitches - pain — dizziness— intelligence "ti pari of trained physi cian — sedative relief sleep! And there you are! It was all so clear now! Morson had told the MitftJ*. the Ministerial Steward. SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR JULY 5. 1908 truth. There had been a robbery! Ormoi Tracy wen- unmitigated scoundrels! And fa father — No, that wouldn't do at all! Wail There had been a robbery; but nut of Mr Morson. It was of somebody else!' Ah! that was the way of it — at last! What a glorious thing was the power of reason! It was just like flying! She could see the whole simple thing, as in a glass. Mr. Brown was Mr. Brown: but whal of that? He was i following out his splendid principles of duty u tracking down Ormond, Tracy, and Gir — V\Lv. oh why, should this stupid, idiotic logic pet singling out her dear old innocent father everyone else, no matter how clearly culpable was lefi icotfree? It was so unreasonable and mean! Anyway, she didn't care 1 Marcus Girard had nothing to do with it whatever, and she defied the whole conspiring w nd up and p ■ thing by silly, disgr evidence Hut one thing was certain George C. Brown was solely and directly responsible for the whole business, and deserved to wear the costume of a common seaman and cks f c the rest of his despicable life AT this juncture, Valda, tini >n finally, turned her fair young back ■:. ti ■ powers of reason and gazed dreanr.lv out I There was a hole in the moonlight, and right through it. away into the far off land of I She had been there once herself; so the pt was easy, and far more pleasant than racking one's brains with mad deductions. Egypt, restful sort of place, if one chose to take fife easj : c did not trouble herself to hunt up pyi and camels and. Bedouins and things No, she was watching the building of an iron road Now on this iron road there were lots of people.— lazy, good for nothing people who had t and driven to their work And a brown man was doing it. — a very brown young with a streak of white just under his hat brim And beside him sto. l another man, a beautiful iust exactly like the other one. only he was thinner and older, and his hair was gray. And the t-. 1 worked with their anus round each other's shoulders This was probably an unorthodox method of railroad construction; but then, you know. Egypt is a country, and maybe things are done differently down there. Then there was a different and it was in a house, -a very different soil of house, for there weren't any wails to it. only poles so that the breezes might come in, and there was matting on the floor, and queei iriL, r water iut;s hung up by strings. And there was a woman in that house, a foreign woman, becau wore bangles which clinked when her brown hands wandered feverishly, and the elder of the men was rather nice to her. The younger man was there too He walked softly up and down, up and down, and earned little brown baby in his am ll was a funny little baby, so I and cute, with delickmsly comic little features which became all wrinkly when it howled And the jounced it Up and down and .vi:.. tender things to it. S> Valda how, grew intensely interested m the baby. As for the two men. thai was a matter of perfect indifference to her - perfect! And then a sheik ot thing came along and t 'id them he was very much obliged to them, and that they must either accept i large fortune or have a l.ince run through their livers. And thei y.\1.1).\ / sai i Auni Mar; ' Mr. * Tracy, I regret to >tate. i> .t very \ ulgar pers »n ■ !>> he?" asked V.t'. ':.; absently •.:. I Aunt Mary seemed surprised. ■Ve-. " she reiterated, 'he i>' gh I hesitate in criti i friend of my brother Marcus, this Tracy ;■■ cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, !>e characterized by the ultracomprehensive name oi gentleman." "How do you mean?" asked Valda. draj herself all the way back from Egypt for the sake of politeness; and Auni Mar] proceeded t i explain Because/ averred the placid one, in placidl) regretful tones, "he displays it in little t!un^> Do you know, my dear, he actually tucks the cornel of his napkin in hi-, shut collar! Thmk of it! Be sides, he snorts when partaking of has food, while his manner of drinking after dinner coffee with the spoon in hi. cup well, Mesa me!" The dignified champion of good breeding paused for an adequate expression of disapproval, and resumed "I suspected this lack of cultivation on observing the character of his neckwear, all! pTOVed it later by a lew of his conversational remarks For example, while discussing literature with Mr Ormond, I asked it random it In- was familiar with Keats Mr Ormond made quite an appropri ate quotation which proved his taste; but that Tracy person spoke v? with an affirmation that. to me, I confess, is utterly incomprehensible." "What did he say?" asked Polly. "I heard t at the time: but — but 1 wasn't listening." "He said." replied Aunt Mary, while a puzzled expression ridged her placid brow, — "' he said. "No, ma'am, ie don't know Keats personaSy, as you might say, but we saw him once in ■<■ with Patsy McCue of Brooklyn." " Valda wanted to laugh. She wanted to do so very much indeed: yet, being more rerined thaa the Tracy person, she choked and said nothicj. Aunt Mary went on. as placidly as r>e!>>re: "I have been wondering ever sir.cc what the creature possibly could mean: and Mr. "," ; " : also was astonished, if not mortided: for I dis tinctly detected him in the act <>: kicking Mr. Tracy beneath the table on one of his limbs." Valda ate a chocolate from a box that lay 12 her lap. but offered no solution of the problem then, while Polly and Aunt Mary discussed it a all its lights, she turned v> the hole ir. the moon light and hurried back to Egypt, without evea checking her trunks. •"PHIS time she hunted for the two men. brazenly, 1 and found them D rather an odd place. It was a sort of hut pi ice, on a river bank, and it was hot and close. One of the brown men lay in a buni. though he wasn't brown any longer, but white. and very still, and the other man -at beside ha and held his hand. It was in the night time too: but not the night time either, exactly, but verr early in the morning, for the desert •■', .-. gray, and a hot, red smudge was burning in the east Aw smells came up from the river and made one Ion? to run away; but the brown man st.iye d and hea his father's" hand. li was a frightfully hot speJ.— horrible!— and there was no wind, no ice. and an other red day was coming fast. The:: the broxs man stooped' and kissed the other gently onU' mouth: and Valda knew — although she c ou ldat * conLin't. 100k — that a man was dea I. But tee brown one sat there.— sat till the morning came.— _..:; i his face was pale and drawn an ! grim. And so — VALDA." said Miss Polly with startling sudden v ness, "did you notice how his h ir curls a? over his left ear?" "■' ' "Who?" asked Valda sharply, rat:.. --politely: and Polly answered with a pardonab : dash .<* sarcastic scorn: '•Why. Captain Joe. of coarse! *V 1 r.i did jwt think 1 meant?" . . Now. whatever were really Valda ; thought, concerning the owner of the ear and hair, her re?i» was quite as remarkable as the Tracy ; erson s com ment on the poet Keats. Verbally, it was not™* Dramatically, it was much. She sprang froffl cer seat, cast the box of chocolates to an onappreaatt™ sea, went bum to her state room, and ; '--".; the door. (Next morning the carpenter came v? and mended it. ) "Goodness!" exclaimed Aunt Mary. ttoodnes* me! Polly, my dear. I verily believe th ! "J^V* about to become a sufferer from mat d ' •■ r - But Valda was not seasick. She was just paw heartsick. — which is worse, for there 1- v -thing W take for it: but Valda tried. Unlike the kragb»« old who always buckled up for a doughty deed. sK unbuckled. That is to say. she unhooked, unlace* untied, undid; but mainly. like millions of ***** ter sufferers. Miss Valda Girard unpince L Then. when lightly garbed and ready for the fray, >he F K ' pared to make her beautiful face nnbeautifol by a long and lovely, delicious cry. She did it for twenty-seven minute-. V ithottt :« inconvenience of "sob restrictors" — meaning tnere by, corsets. Then she sat up and observed n9^ in a mirror. They were not flattering. She tow herself that she was simply, absolutely hideous^-* which, by the way. was the' biggest rib she badtQW yet. and she knew it. Still, she had looked niacn letter twenty-seven .minutes before: so no* proceeded to obliterate the wreck of * « ''>' "T application of coll cream and nine other unctuou* articles, rubbed on and in and over and >•:: (»' Pl"P l " tient. intricate art. the while she criticized creatio.. generally and adversely. " And to think." she muttered, among c ; things, "of Polly Thurman being such a shaineu^ silly little fool as to notice whether a mans ~« curls up over one ear or not!" It was simply, perfectly, positively n .1:«.-.iiou>- > "And besides.^ she told her pathetic grg streaked image in the glass, "his hair curls up J-^* exactly the same ov. ■ K>th ears!" VIII. Aunt Mary's Mutiny NEXT morning— for two distinct r«.M>-r.>— M-^ Girard got up very early. In the first !**■*•.„ had not slept a wink; in the second, she \v.m«a | observe for herself how Mr. Morson- Brown Iwkedia the degrading costume of a common seaman. , As for the cause of this condition, she had «*?*"£* the whole thing out after she went to bed. he SOned it out in nineteen entirely new ways. l>Ut j variably pooi old Marcus Girard bobbed up an butted into trouble, so to speak. I 'her.-: ■--• daughter reasoned herself into a state Ol !r ' c " hysteria; then finally hit upon the sensible and <■ rect solution :n.: n . On Wall Street, she had heard, there was one _» fallible method employed in the purchase or sa.e