laugh from without seemed to answer my unasked question in the negative.

But as well as the laugh I heard another sound--the tones of a sweet sad voice in despair coming across the room.

"Oh, alone, alone! is there no human thing near me? No hope--no hope. I shall go mad--or die."

The last words were spoken with a gasp.

I tried to jump out of bed, but could not stir, my limbs were bound in sleep. The young girl's head fell suddenly back upon the pillow, and the limp-hanging jaw and wide-open, purposeless mouth spoke but too plainly of what had happened.

Again I heard from without the fierce, diabolical laughter, which swelled louder and louder, till at last it grew so strong that in very horror I shook aside my sleep and sat up in bed. listened and heard a knocking at the door, but in another moment I became more awake, and knew that the sound came from the hall. It was, no doubt, Mr. Trevor returning from his party.

The hall-door was opened and shut, and then came a

ed quickly to the door and shook his fist at the departing horseman.

"Don't you tell Logan that I sent you!" he shouted belligerently.

The stranger turned in his saddle, grinning cheerfully, and favored his late host with a well-known, two-handed nose signal. Then he slapped the black horse and shot down the street without another backward glance.

Pop, arms akimbo, watched him sweep out of sight around a bend.

"Huh!" he snorted. "Wonder what yo're doin' down here? Galivantin' around th' country, insultin' honest, hard-workin' folks, an' wearin' two guns, low down an' tied! I reckon when you learns th' lay of th' country, if you stays long enough, you'll wind up by joinin' that gang up in th' Twin Buttes country. I allus like to see triggers on six-shooters, I do." He had not noticed the triggers, but that was no bar to his healthy imagination. Shuffling back to his seat, he watched the indignant Andy pecking at a wet spot on the floor.

"So you didn't chaw hi

cut off from the race of Israel with all the prescribed curses of excommunication upon his head.

Spinoza was not present when excommunication was pronounced upon him. He had left Amsterdam to stay with some Collegiant friends on the Ouwerkerk road, for, so one tradition relates, an attempt had been made by one of the over-righteous upon Spinoza's life soon after he became an object of official displeasure. Although Spinoza was, throughout his life, ready to suffer the consequences of his opinions and actions, he at no time had the least aspiration to become a martyr. When Spinoza heard of his excommunication he sent a spirited and unyielding reply. The spirit if not the words of that reply (not yet discovered) eventually made its way into the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For the rest of his life, whenever he had occasion to refer to the Jews, Spinoza referred to them as he did to the Gentiles--a race to which he did not belong. And immediately, with the perfect grace and humor of a culture

Rollory, but Rollory is dead and naught can save your city.'

And the two spies went back alive to their mountains again, and asthey reached them the first ray of the sun came up red over thedesert behind Merimna and lit Merimna's spires. It was the hourwhen the purple guard were wont to go back into the city with theirtapers pale and their robes a brighter colour, when the coldsentinels came shuffling in from dreaming in the desert; it was thehour when the desert robbers hid themselves away, going back totheir mountain caves; it was the hour when gauze-winged insects areborn that only live for a day; it was the hour when men die that arecondemned to death; and in this hour a great peril, new andterrible, arose for Merimna and Merimna knew it not.

Then Seejar turning said: 'See how red the dawn is and how red thespires of Merimna. They are angry with Merimna in Paradise and theybode its doom.'

So the two spies went back and brought the news to their King, andfor a few days the Kings of

ess worse than death.Recognizing, therefore, that in this cultivated age a wall ofscepticism and cynicism is gradually being built up by intellectualthinkers of every nation against all that treats of the Supernaturaland Unseen, I am aware that my narration of the events I haverecently experienced will be read with incredulity. At a time whenthe great empire of the Christian Religion is being assailed, orpolitely ignored by governments and public speakers and teachers, Irealize to the fullest extent how daring is any attempt to prove,even by a plain history of strange occurrences happening to one'sself, the actual existence of the Supernatural around us; and theabsolute certainty of a future state of being, after the passagethrough that brief soul-torpor in which the body perishes, known tous as Death.

In the present narration, which I have purposely called a "romance,"I do not expect to be believed, as I can only relate what I myselfhave experienced. I know that men and women of to-day must

dging assistance from the Austen family, to pay off her husband's debts, and to give to all her younger children a decent education at a school at Sevenoaks; the eldest boy (the future squire) being taken off her hands by his grandfather.[6] Elizabeth left behind her not only elaborately kept accounts but also a minute description of her actions through many years and of the motives which governed them. It may be interesting to quote one sentence relating to her move from Horsmonden to Sevenoaks for the sake of her children's education. 'These considerations with y^{e} tho'ts of having my own boys in y^{e} house, with a good master (as all represented him to be) were y^{e} inducements that brought me to Sen'nock, for it seemed to me as if I cou'd not do a better thing for my children's good, their education being my great care, and indeed all I think I was capable of doing for 'em, for I always tho't if they had learning, they might get better shift in y^{e} world, with w^{t} small fortune was alloted 'em.'

e blue wavesof the great Pacific. A little way behind them was the house, a neatframe cottage painted white and surrounded by huge eucalyptus andpepper trees. Still farther behind that--a quarter of a mile distantbut built upon a bend of the coast--was the village, overlooking apretty bay.

Cap'n Bill and Trot came often to this tree to sit and watch theocean below them. The sailor man had one "meat leg" and one "hickoryleg," and he often said the wooden one was the best of the two. OnceCap'n Bill had commanded and owned the "Anemone," a trading schoonerthat plied along the coast; and in those days Charlie Griffiths, whowas Trot's father, had been the Captain's mate. But ever since Cap'nBill's accident, when he lost his leg, Charlie Griffiths had beenthe captain of the little schooner while his old master livedpeacefully ashore with the Griffiths family.

This was about the time Trot was born, and the old sailor becamevery fond of the baby girl. Her real name was Mayre, but when shegrew big

h of the revolutionary convulsion and its suppression, are, besides, of paramount importance from a historical point of view. All these petty, personal quarrels and recriminations--all these contradictory assertions that it was Marrast, or Ledru Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or any other member of the Provisional Government, or the whole of them, that steered the Revolution amidst the rocks upon which it foundered--of what interest can they be, what light can they afford, to the American or Englishman who observed all these various movements from a distance too great to allow of his distinguishing any of the details of operations? No man in his senses will ever believe that eleven men,[4] mostly of very indifferent capacity either for good or evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of thirty-six millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their way before them as the eleven did. But how it came to pass that thirty-six millions were at once called upon to decide for themselves which way to g

The outer door was locked and he paused on the sidewalk, wondering how to get in.

This problem was settled for him as a woman crossed the small entrance and pushed open the ground glass door. She was blond, with the enameled finish of Max Factor and the House of Westmore, neatly turned out. She gave Lennox a speculative look, but he was too busy catching the door to give her more than a passing glance.

The entry was small and tiled. An automatic elevator and a stairway which looped like a climbing snake around the cage offered a choice. He chose the elevator and rode upward in the little car with a faint accompanying sense of claustrophobia.

The girl who opened the door was small and very dark. It startled him. He was so used to blondes. She said: "Yes?" impatiently, as if she dared him to give a good excuse for knocking on the door.

She wore a flowered housecoat with a long zipper up the front, and from the way the coat fitted he judged that there could be little underneath.

nk well enough of it to write it up."

"Go on!" I said. "I'll whack up with you square and honest."

"Which is more than either Watson or Bunny ever did with my father or my grandfather, else I should not be in the business which now occupies my time and attention," said Raffles Holmes with a cold snap to his eyes which I took as an admonition to hew strictly to the line of honor, or to subject myself to terrible consequences. "With that understanding, Jenkins, I'll tell you the story of the Dorrington Ruby Seal, in which some crime, a good deal of romance, and my ancestry are involved."

II THE ADVENTURE OF THE DORRINGTON RUBY SEAL

"Lord Dorrington, as you may have heard," said Raffles Holmes, leaning back in my easy-chair and gazing reflectively up at the ceiling, "was chiefly famous in England as a sporting peer. His vast estates, in five counties, were always open to any sportsman of renown, or otherwise, as long as he was a true sportsman. So open, indeed, was the house that