ging always to be taken to you so that she might ask you to sing one little song to her."

"Where is she? Take me to her, doctor, and I will sing to her at once.

"

Half an hour later, with all her soul in her exquisite voice, she was standing in the cottage singing a song of life and love to the bewildered villagers, while the sick child, propped up by pillows to hear the desire of her heart, cried out that it was an angel who had come in answer to her prayers.

It was midnight, twelve hours since Eva had charmed away the shadow of death from the village home, and she was holding a great assembly hushed and spellbound, while her voice, no longer softened and subdued, rang with all its glorious power through the large opera hall which she had lately added to her castle.

It was the moment of her crowning triumph, the moment when Desdemona, realizing to the full her danger, and the inflexible purpose of Othello, transformed by jealousy into a murderer, ceased to plead for her life, and instead, proudly and passionately declared her innocence.

Count Devas. the Italian singer, who had already won universal applause for his wonderful rendering of Othello, faced her, the madness of rage that was consuming him portrayed vividly in every feature of his face, in every movement of his tense, nervous fingers.

There was a silence, intense, dead silence for an instant as Eva's last note died away, and then, as she covered her eyes with her hands, the count, with one swift step, was at her side, pressing with ruthless hands the cushion on her upturned face, and the curtain began slowly to descend on the death scene.

An electric thrill ran through the audience; the horror and despair of the tragedy before them seemed suddenly real and tangible; the scream, strangled in its birth, that came from the beautiful singer seemed an appeal to them for help; and then an amazing thing occurred.

In the excitement of the scene no one had noticed the sudden arrival in the hall of Dr. Harrowden, who, pale and breathless, stood watching the descent of the curtain, until, apparently overpowered by impulse, he ran up the hall, leaped up to the stage, and, springing across the footlights, threw himself upon the count.

In the desperate struggle that ensued, momentary as it was, before the paralyzed onlookers rushed to separate the combatants, no one noticed that Eva herself had not moved, and lay still under the cushions.

There was the flash of a knife, an exclamation from Dr. Harrowden, and then, as he dropped, stabbed in the shoulder, a

dozen hands were on the count, and, though he fought with the limitless strength of a madman, he was overpowered at last by numbers, and carried off the stage, bound and helpless.

Dr. Harrowden, whose faintness was only temporary, had risen already, and, disregarding the help offered him, hurried to the couch and raised the cushions.

Eva lay there insensible, with the marks on her white neck where the count's fingers had gone near to suffocating her.

Dr. Harrowden bent and laid his ear to her lips and heart.

She is not dead," he said briefly. Carry her to her room. I will attend to her.

Wondering exclamations broke out on all sides. What had happened? Had the count really attempted Eva's life? How had the doctor been aware of her danger? And a thousand other questions and surmises. Later, when Eva, very weak and ill, had recovered consciousness, she told the story of the count's strange, wild love for her, an infatuation which had seized him when they first met in the opera house at Milan, of her inability to shake off the influence which he exercised over her, in spite of her dread and dislike of him, of his appearance at the castle when she was arranging the cast of "Othello," and imperious demand to be allowed to remain there and to play the title role.

"How can I ever thank you enough?" she said to Dr. Harrowden, when, after many days of suffering from the count's stiletto wound, he came, at her request, to see her. "It was a miracle that you should have saved me as you did. A moment longer, and it would have been too late. How did you guess that his acting was reality?"

"The thanks are due really to yourself," he said gently. "Your kindness in singing to that poor little child was the cause of your preservation. I went to see her that evening, and found her just awakened from a strange dream of you, which had left the impression on her mind that you were in danger. The beautiful lady with the angel's voice,' she called you. She would not be comforted until I promised to go up to the castle and assure myself that no harm threatened you. Her persistence gave me a touch of anxiety, and it came to me with a sort of intuition, as I watched the count, that he was mad. felt sure he meant mischief. It seems almost as if the child had second sight: but these coincidences do occur sometimes."

I

"And still," said Eva, "it is to you I owe my life. You risked yours for mine. Oh! tell me how to thank you."

"I dare ask nothing," he said, "since I dare not ask too much."

And they were both silent.

But in their silence, a hope and a promise lay. And there are some who say that the most beautiful singer of the day will exercise the prerogative that her pre-eminence gives to her, and will make a romantic marriage entirely for her.-Penny Pictorial Magazine.

Where Are the Wicked Folks Buried?

"Tell me, gray-haired sexton," I said, "Where in this field are the wicked folks laid? I have wandered the quiet old graveyard through And studied the epitaphs, old and new, But on monument, obelisk, pillar or stone, I read no evil that men have done."

The old sexton stood by a grave newly made,
With his chin on his hand, his hand on a spade;
I knew by the gleam of his eloquent eye
That his heart was instructing his lips to reply:

"Who is the judge when the soul takes its flight?
Who is to judge 'twixt the wrong and the right?
Which of us mortals shall dare to say
That our neighbor was wicked who died today?

"In our journey through life the farther we speed,,
The better we learn that humanity's need
Is Charity's spirit that prompts us to find
Rather virtue than vice in the lives of our kind.

"Therefore, good deeds we'record on these stones,
The evil that men do, let it die with their bones;
I have labored as sexton this many a year,
But I have never buried a bad man here."

-Richmond State.

How to Win a Wife.

"I don't know how to answer you. Your news is very hard for me to bear. I feel angry, Herman."

Herman Clayton, himself the picture of sorrowful amazement, looked at his uncle in silence as the old man spoke with angry vehemence.

He was a tall, stalwart young man of twenty-four, with a fresh, handsome face, now deeply clouded. His uncle was not over fifty, but an appearance of ill health made him seem much older. His usual pallor crept once more over his flushed, excited face before he spoke again to Herman, and his angry voice was gentle as he said:

"I was hasty, Herman, hurt and surprised. Tell me, now, how did it happen?"

"I scarcely know how to tell you, sir," replied Herman, respectfully.

was

"Where did you meet this girl?" "Miss Gordon," said Herman, 66 very intimate with Mr. Delvine's daughters. I met her there. Mr. Delvine bade me welcome in his house as soon as I became his clerk."

I hope you will not hold to that resolution, Uncle Noel."

"I suppose you were influenced some by the $30,000 her mother left her."

"I didn't know that she had a cent." "Her mother kept that safely enough, and left it to her daughter. I knew that at the time she died. Oh, my lad, think better of it! Money is not everything.'

"I never heard of her money until this minute, uncle. I do so wish you would see her."

"I see her! Never! If you marry John Gordon's daughter, you may take leave of me and the farm."

"Will you tell me why one of Mr. Delvine's daughter's would have suited you any better?"

There was dead silence in the room for some minutes. After this, Uncle Noel spoke at last in low tones, as if he was reading instead of conversing.

"When I was a young man, Herman, not older than you, I was working on this farm for old 'Squire Haywood, who was very fond of me. I was only a farm hand, yet the old 'squire always chose me to drive him out, or to do any business that required a trusty person. He had no family, so it made quite a stir when his sister died in New York and her daughter came to live on the farm. She was the handsomest woman I ever saw in my life—only seventeen, but with the self-possession of a woman of thirty. I was, as I said, often about her uncle, and met Alicia frequently. She was so kind to me, and had so many winning ways, that she had my heart in her grasp in less than a week. Yet how was I, a poor country boy, to know it was skillful coquetry, the sport of a flirt?

"Then John Gordon, the city lawyer, came, and he, too, loved her. I proposed to Alicia and was rejected. Gordon proposed and was accepted. I have outgrown that hallucination, my lad, yet at what a cost! Herman, do not ask me to welcome the child of John and Alicia here. I cannot do it."

"Her parents are dead," replied Herman. "She lives with her father's sister." I know John died insolvent and Alicia

suit us."

In about a week Mr. Clayton, Sr., began to wonder how he had ever existed without his new housekeeper. Gladys was untiring in her efforts to please and amuse Uncle Noel, and in his most painful moments of distress no hand was as soothing as was Gladys'.

The old man sat musing a long time. A vague mistrust of Gladys had crossed his mind, a wonder why a woman so gentle and refined, so evidently a lady, was serving in a menial capacity.

When Herman came in at tea time he found his uncle flushed and excited. In a few words the cause of the agitation was communicated to the young man. "You think Gladys is not what she seems, uncle?” 'You are right. She is under false pretenses, Herman."

"But putting that aside, what fault have you to find?"

"Fault? I could not find a fault if I tried. She is the most lovable, capable, domestic girl I ever saw, as well as a lady in every word and action."

"Then you would like her to stay here if I prove to you she is worthy of your confidence and affection?"

"Gladly."

"Gladys Grey Gordon! Will you for give me the deception, Uncle Noel?"

"Will you forgive me for my willful blindness, Herman? "No wonder you love her! Bring her here and let me ask her if she will stay to cheer the short time I may live to see your happiness."

The wedding was not long delayed. Care and love are rejuvenating Uncle Noel, who threatens to prove Dr. Dodge a false prophet yet, and who dearly loves to tease Gladys about the way Herman won his wife-Chicago Times-Herald.

When My Sweetheart Thunders West.

There thrills a hopeless longing in my weary, aching breast,

When I watch the N. P. flyer swinging out toward the West.

She will sweep within the shadows of the mountains, rough and grand,

And, like a mighty serpent, wind across the tableland;

She will pass the hills and valleys, and the fertile, rolling plain,

Where I "punched" the herds of cattle I shall never "punch" again.

"Through the sunshine and the rain,

I shall flash across the plain

Where the old-time life is pulsing," says the swiftly-moving train.

Every morn her trail of smoke would dim the dawn of day;

Every morn I watched her thunder up and soar away.

With loyal, loving eyes I praised her beauty, grace and power,

As she went racing down the rails at sixty miles an hour.

She seemed a lost world's beacon, when her headlight, clear and bright,

Drilled the darkness of the defiles, as she rumbled through the night.

In a band of mellow light,

Her headlight, warm and white, Streamed across the endless prairie through the velvet, clinging night.

She seemed to whisper to me of a world I did not know,

(I know it now too well, alas! and wish it were not so.)

She seemed to murmur: "Come with me. Leave the cattle and the plain.

If the city life grows tiresome, I will bring you back again."

But seven years of exile fail to still the wild unrest

That wakes the endless yearning when my sweetheart thunders West.

When my sweetheart thunders West, In my aching, hopeless breast Comes the longing for the prairie and the life I love the best.

-WILL E. MAIDEN, in The Northwest Magazine.

Wrecks on the Rails.

"In the course of my extensive travels," remarked the wholesale clothing drummer, "I've been mixed up in a dozen or more railroad accidents of various degrees of unpleasantness, and it's my opinion that people under such circumstances always act in the most unexpected way," says the Springfield Republican.

"Well, I don't know," said the railroad man. "Seems to me they're pretty unanimous in always blaming it on the railroad and howling for whatever damages might be coming to them. Human nature isn't all that it might be when it comes to a pinch."

the general public that's still mixed up in the wreckage. I've never yet seen what you'd call a panic in a railroad wreck; the sudden excitement and the necessity for action seem to pull a man together as soon as he gets time to think. But there certainly are queer performances in the first few minutes of a general smash. For instance, I was in a collision a couple of years ago in the middle of the night, and with my usual luck I discovered a couple of windows that had come together and made one big, comfortable exit right next to my berth. So I crawled out and looked to see what was going to happen next. First thing I saw was a pair of legs waving a signal of distress from another window, so I went down there and pulled on the nearest one. Naturally I didn't know what variety of legs they were, and I didn't care much, as I felt pretty sure there must be somebody at the other end of 'em. At the first haul I could feel that things were coming my way, and I'd just braced for a stronger pull, when a voice from the inside stopped me.

Is that a man?' it said.

"That's what it is,' I answered. 'Didnt' think it was the angel Gabriel, did you? Come out,' and I gave another yank.

"Is the train on fire?' asked the voice. It was a female voice and there was a note of determination in it.

"I only just got out myself,' said I, ‘and I don't know much about the situation, but if you'll come out you can see for yourself,' and I gave a harder tug, but at that the legs began to kick.

"Let go, man!' says the voice. 'I guess there's no hurry and I prefer to come out proper.'

"Well, the feet wriggled and squirmed and there was a sort of twist and in a minute the finest picture of a comic paper old maid crawled out that you ever saw in a nightmare, and she came head first, too. In one hand she had a little bag.

“'I'd have come quicker, but I couldn't find my satchel,' she said, and that made me just a little hot under the collar.'

"You seem to have lots of time to go fussing around after your belongings,' I said, but as likely as not there's a lot of people needing help while you're wasting your time and mine.'

"That's the very reason why I wanted that satchel,' she said, as cool as a cucumber. Don't you believe that you know everything, young man. Now, you go into that satchel and you'll find some good whisky and some lint and bandages and other things. I always bring 'em along when I travel in case of accident, and this is the first chance I've had to use 'em.'"'

"There's one queer thing about most railroad accidents," remarked the railroad man. "There's always a much smaller

loss of life than one would expect from the looks of the wreckage. I've seen cars so chopped to bits that you wouldn't think a living soul could have come out of them, and yet in the midst of all the wreckage most of the people weren't badly hurt. In particular, I remember one collision out on the Jersey meadows in which a three-car local train got the worst of the deal. The rear car didn't look like anything in particular on the inside after the accident. The whole interior was just a mass of twisted seats and splintered woodwork, and nothing like an aisle was left in the place. Half an hour after the smash the superintendent was on the spot, and his first question was how many had been killed. We told him there were none dead and only one badly injured. Then he took a look at the rear car.

"It's a mighty good thing there was nobody in that car,' said he, and it took the combined testimony of the conductor and two trainmen to couvince him that there had been at least twenty persons in the car when the other train struck it. I must admit that the people weren't pretty to look at when they came out, and it took some prying to extricate some of them, but a broken arm and a sprained shoulder was the extent of the serious injuries. So far as I saw, though, there wasn't a man, woman, or child who didn't have a memento of the occasion in the shape of bumps and scratches. The flying glass from the windows was the cause of most of the trouble.

"The result of that accident was one death; a man who had been in the first car, the car that got off easy. He was walking down the aisle at the time, and when the shock came was thrown over against a seat and his skull was so badly fractured that he died a few hours later. The rest of the people in that car didn't average a bruise apiece."

"It's generally the man in the safest position that gets the worst of it," remarked the drummer, philosophically. "Once I was on a train that met a cow on the track and they both slid off together. We were all shaken up a good deal, and one of the cars tipped over, but the only real damage, besides that to the cow, was to a farmer's boy who had been sitting on a fence yelling at the beast. The cowcatcher flipped the fence out from under him and he lost a leg. The owner of the cow, I afterward heard, sued the railroad, and the boy sued the railroad, and the railroad put forward the plea that the boy ought to have sued the owner of the cow, as it was the owner's fault that the cow was on the track. I don't know how the case came out, but it struck me as a very pretty little mix-up."

"Talking of cattle," said the railroad

man, did you ever hear of a rear-end collision with one of those track-hunting beasts?"

"That's what the one I just told you about was," said the drummer. "The cow was going ahead when we hit her."

"I don't mean that kind of a rear-end collision. I'm talking about a rear-end collision from the point of view of the train. Several years ago I was in one, and it resulted in a suit, too. We had just stopped because of a little washout in front when a frisky bull came prancing out of a field and up the track after us. Just then we started up slow, and the bull, seeing that, kind of said to himself: 'Here's where I chase that thing off the earth.' He came into us full charge and hit the rear platform I never heard that it disturbed the engineer up at the other end of the train any, but the bull just lay down and died, and a shyster lawyer actually got the farmer to sue on the ground that the train had no business stopping there and blocking up the track anyway. The average farmer would rather lose money suing a railroad than make it in any other way." "The worst case of fright and about the best case of nerve I ever came across, "" said the drummer, was a chap who was traveling through the Middle West for a firm last spring. I met him on the train, and found he played a good game of whist, so, with two other men, we made up a little game. He was my partner, and was a very silent fellow. He didn't even mention what his line was, which is unusual. With him he had a satchel of very superior make, and the way he kept his eye on that all the time, sneaking little nervous peeks at it every two minutes, led me to suspect that he was a jewelry man and had a big lot of valuable stones in the grip, though I couldn't imagine why a man should take chances carrying such things in a satchel. Well, the smash came-it was my latest one, by the way-just as my partner was on his way back to the game from having gone to get some water. In all the excitement, I distinctly noted the yell he let out. It was the finest piece of vocal work of that kind that I had ever heard. As the car sort of crumpled up he made a dive toward us, and I figured that he was thinking of his satchel. My luck was with me, and I found a way out, with nothing worse than a scalp wound and a collection of bumps. Pretty soon he came crawling out after me.

He wasn't hurt, so far as I could see, but he was whiter than a sheet. I gave him a swig of whisky from my flask and told him to brace up. He took an awful hooker, and then began to twist his fingers and kind of moan:

64 6

'My satchel! my satchel! my satchel!' "Well, what's the matter with your satchel?' I said.

"It's in there,' he said, and I thought by his tone he was going to cry. 'It's in there where I can't get at it.'

66 6

'Say, you make me tired, 'I said. 'You ought to be mighty thankful to be out yourself, without worrying about any satchel.'

"I'll have to go in after it,' said he, looking around kind of wild, and prancing like a horse with sore feet.'

"Not on your life,' said I. 'Everything's loose in there, and the whole thing may collapse at any minute, and then where'd you be? Besides, the car's afire down at the other end.'

'My God!' he said. 'Afire? That settles it. I've got to get that satchel, then, if I die for it,' and he actually tore his hair. I'd never seen it done before, except on the stage, but he did it.

666

Oh, take a brace,' I said, getting disgusted with the man. 'I guess the fire won't do it much damage. If it's diamonds-'

"Diamonds!' he said. 'Man, it's dynamite! Enough of it to blow us all into the sky.'

"Dynamite!' I yelled. 'What are you, an Anarchist?'

666

'No, I'm a dynamite agent,' he said. 'Don't keep me talking here. I've got to go in. I've got to do it. There's no other way. There may be people in that wreckage, and if that stuff goes off-'

66

'Never mind explaining,' I said. 'Go in, and the Lord help you.'

"That's the sort of thing that takes nerve. I don't believe I could have done it. He flopped down and crawled in there, and I watched and waited for a week or so, as it seemed, and pretty soon he came out, looking like a dead man, and bringing the satchel between his teeth like a dog, because he needed both hands to crawl with. Well, we escorted that satchel across two lots and buried it in a furrow, and put a stone over it before we went back to work at the train. It happened that the fire was put out before it reached the place where the satchel had been. Why on earth the stuff didn't explode and blow us all to flinders when the crash came is more than I know, or the agent, either. He said dynamite was always doing things, and failing to do things, in the most inexplicable way, and that was what made the life of a dynamite agent one long round of excitement. He never dared tell what it was he had in the satchel, he said, because the railroads wouldn't carry him if they knew. He went back and dug up his traveling infernal machine and walked with it to the nearest town, and that's the last I saw of him or want to see, though he certainly did have good nerve. Ever since then, when I've seen a man with a satchel that he seems to think a heap of, I've quietly moved into the next car."