The Picture Puzzle

The Canadian Magazine cover 3/1910

The Picture Puzzle

By W. Lacey Amy

From The Canadian Magazine, March 1910.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, November 2015

IT occupied but a small space in the morning paper, but it was set off by a picture of a group of children intent on something lying on a table. Hovering near was a homey father and a happy mother with a baby in her arms. The faces of all were lit up with the joy a family-man loves to see on the faces of his family.

There was very little reading in the advertisement: “The popular Picture Puzzle has taken the place of bridge in polite society. Everybody plays it. It brightens the wits and is an education to young and old.’’

Now I am not one of those men who affect an English drawl or support the Suffragette movement simply because “polite society’’ leans that way. I pride myself that I am intensely practical and unimpressionable. But as I dropped my paper and read the morning dunners it did not take me long to decide that whatever took “the place of bridge” would please the butcher and me; and as the father of a rising family I attached due importance to the game that would also be an “education.” Their mother has ambitions for each of the children—ambitions that will require some education in their fulfilment.

Ever since my picture puzzle experience I know I was right in feeling the need of “education” for my children, seeing that they inherited so little from one side of the house. I have also learned that the illustrator of an advertisement requires no photograph to work from.

With canny care that I should not be taken in by untried experiments I, first of all, purchased a small twenty-five piece puzzle and presented it to my second youngest boy. The process of education for the youngest is yet in the spanking stage. Harry was delighted—even though I had already pieced together fourteen of the twenty-five before I handed them over. During the matching of the fourteen Harry was being educated by proxy.

Anyone could see the great mindtraining of picture puzzles. After even my short experience with it I was undoubtedly brilliant at dinner—even my wife noticed that, and she rarely shows an eagerness to acknowledge that characteristic in me. I frankly imputed my brightness to the “keening up of intellectual games,” and used several other phrases of that kind that would qualify for an advertisement. I announced that in the face of such evidence I would purchase a picture puzzle of proportions for my two eldest boys, Harry, aged ten, and Simpson, aged fourteen. Even William, a year old, would profit by the “elevated atmosphere that would pervade the house,” and could use the pieces for playthings when the boys had completed their education.

My wife did not look convinced. I am not yet able to claim that my wife thinks through my brains. In strictest honesty, I sometimes think she cannot be made to believe what she does not actually see—in this case I mean the gray matter, not the out-ward form of brains. I had, I confess, used similar arguments before I bought the boys the roller skates with which we found them one day learning to fall safely on the oak border around the drawing-room rug. It was I, too, who had presented them with a set of tools after reading a treatise on manual training. When a newel post, was sawed off and a face carved on a mahogany pedestal I raised no objection to the impounding of the tools.

I ought to know my boys don’t educate according to advertisement. But the picture puzzle panic was over me.

With the idea of getting the most education for the least money, and incidentally to procure something befitting the father of a family, I devoted an hour of a busy day to discovering the biggest puzzle on sale.

I have come to the conclusion that a man can be judged by the size of his picture puzzle—in inverse ratio. When I found one with five hundred and four pieces I was satisfied.

“Please tear the picture off the box,” I demanded of the patent-pale girl who waited on me. I did not purpose to allow the boys to build with the picture in front of them. Even I was not to see it.

The girl did as she was told. A shop girl meets all kinds of—me.

“After dinner,” I announced to the family when I reached home, ‘‘we’ll spend an hour in educative pleasure.”

The introduction of the five hundred and four pieces into our house was a distinct success. After a few words of wisdom left over from my brilliancy of the night before, I emptied the box on the table which had been cleared for the purpose. The baby, whose education was important enough to break his bed routine, gurgled all over when the brightly coloured, irregular shapes tumbled on the table. Harry jumped around in glee. My wife looked happily at the happy faces, and even Simpson showed interest. As for myself, I experienced a keen elation at having discovered a game with all the virtues of a course in Ruskin. Under the inspiration of the moment I remarked to my wife that it pays to read advertisements.

William and Harry made a dive for the pieces, but I calmly, though firmly, restrained an excitement that presented no direct relation to education.

“You had better let me start it for you,” I explained, as I pushed them all back and looked interestedly at the jumble. Then the chaos began to get into my system. I felt as if a few hundred pieces less would not have been an insurmountable obstacle to the acceptance of a cheaper, smaller puzzle, nor any impairment of its instructive value. Even the picture would not have been amiss to start on.

All eyes were on me: I must be cool. I must show them the earmarks of education in embryo. Carefully I studied the pieces.

“Ah, a nose!” I exclaimed at last, picking up a piece about the size of a man’s reputation just before his wife returns from a month’s visit out of town. “Now we have a nose. That will be the foundation of our building. Now what would naturally go with that?”

“A handkerchief,” answered Harry, and received a fitting rebuke, which extended to my wife when she laughed.

“With a nose, an eye would go.” I continued in the tone of a Sunday School superintendent who desires to make the answer appear to the distinguished visitor to come from the scholars.

“Now, who can find an eye? Simpson, spread out those pieces. Clear off that other table and lay out some other pieces on it. Things are too crowded here.”

But the eye was watching for us. It is surprising how many things look like an eye, and how many eyes resemble something else, when you are looking for one in a picture puzzle. I saw an eye in everything and Simpson saw it in nothing.

“Now that,” I said, as I tried to make an angle fit a curve, “is an eye of anger. You see the low threatening brow? This”—I picked up another piece and ran it all around the nose to find a fit—“is an eye of fear—dilated pupil, fixed expression. To the ordinary observer they may not be distinct but the highest art—ahem!—is that which does not stoop to details—a stroke of the pen or brush and you have the expressive eye. In this case—”

“Aw, this ain’t no nose,” broke in Harry, who had been viewing my first find from all possible angles.

It will be noted that my second son’s education has so far been more along the line of mental and visual development than in English. That can come later.

“This ain’t no nose,” he repeated, throwing it back on my table. “It’s the corner of a box—or a bit of cloud—or any old thing.”

Harry was feeling the chaos too.

“Hadn’t you better start with an outside piece?” hastily interposed my wife, observing the cool eye of speculation with which I measured Harry’s punishable parts. She had picked up a piece with one straight edge and a white streak along it where the paper of the picture had not quite reached the edge. “That would make it easier; you could work inwards, then.”

One thing about my wife, when she goes to clean a room she starts at the floor, sweeps, wipes the borders and dusts the chairs in the same routine every time. It is simply work to her. Her idea is merely to get it finished. There are no elevating thoughts on cleanliness and example to the boys while she draws the duster through the rungs of the chair.

“This, my dear,” I answered, and I hope I showed the dignity I felt—“this is an intellectual game. The profit from it is in the game, not in the finish. Anybody could solve the puzzle by starting from the outside, after which it would merely be a process of fitting. The boys and myself”—the implication was plain—“are doing this not alone for the sport that is in it.”

Simpson took the piece from his mother, while I continued my search for any two pieces that would match. Finally, in desperation I settled on one piece, and, one by one, ran the others around it. At the three hundredth piece, or thereabouts, I was rewarded.

“There,” I gloated, placing the two pieces tenderly on the table, and step ping back to view my success. “That shows what I mean, dear. Application, application! That’s the reward, you see, of patience and concentration.”

“Have you only got two, dad?” asked Harry from the other table “Why, Simpson and me have twenty pieces matched here.”

The pang—was it jealousy?—was drowned in the knowledge that the boys were receiving their education. Their table looked very interesting.

“Now, boys, you two come to this table and match while I build up from yours. This work will be better for you.”

Fortunately nobody asked me to explain my reasoning. After all, who had paid for that game, anyway?

The matching progressed wonder fully. I was successful in placing a dozen more pieces and a nice little square met my admiring gaze. I must share my joy.

“Bring Willie here, my dear,” I said to my wife. “Let him see the picture budding forth. It may be the evolution of things will enter his tiny brain. Let him receive all the education he can from this.”

My wife urged that it was William’s bed-time, but I insisted on allowing nothing to interfere with education. So William was brought, and the first thing he did was to make a playful sweep at my structure of pieces, one of those innocent movements that break your eyeglasses or upset the coffee in your lap. The corner piece fell loudly to the floor.

“If you don’t take that boy to bed right away,” I thundered, “his education will proceed with the more direct application of hands.” And William a education was very near to starting.

In the meantime the boys had formed a section and another table was necessary. Simpson came to look at my work.

“Why, father,” he said, after a moment’s scrutiny, “a girl’s boot doesn’t run out of her ear.”

Simpson was called after a maiden aunt of mine whose money might otherwise have gone towards a home for Indigent Italian Gray Hounds, and he felt the weight of those prospective riches. He is only fourteen, but his attendance at the Fletcher College for Boys gives him a right to the name of “Student,” and a desire for combing his hair before a mirror. As a boy of culture his remarks are supposed to carry weight. Accordingly, he accompanies them with an inflection of the upper lip that makes me wish him back in his baby days for about four minutes.

I felt at that moment I could not have done Simpson justice in that short period.

I ordered him and Harry to bed. It was their bed-time anyway. It would nettle any father to see a son of fourteen with an education in fuller bud than his own. I never attended the Fletcher College for Boys, to be sure—but—but—I have a son who does, and besides I foot the bills. I have always believed that concentration is necessary to perfect accomplishment—and concentration is scarcely possible with two boys aged ten and fourteen, one of whom is not overburdened with reverence and the other of whom has difficulty in concealing his contempt.

With concentration, four tables and two chairs I felt in a position to do myself justice. I began to work on a system—that is, I matched every unplaced piece to the built section until I found the one that fitted. I was not conscious of any great mental development, but concentration and system must develop something, and as there was no appearance of development in the picture puzzle, why, of course, it must have been taking effect in my brain.

The sound of my wife’s voice down the stairs roused me to an abrupt appreciation of the clocks striking two. Leaving a large note on the table ordering the maid to touch nothing I tip-toed to bed. Another notice on the boys’ door gave similar instructions, but before I got into bed I turned the key in their door to forestall disobedience. I am adopting different methods with William to enforce obedience since my success with the other two boys would scarcely provide copy for a woman’s journal.

Concentration seemed to have got into my system. It remained with me the next morning, and now that I can think of it calmly it was my long suit to the end of the puzzle. It hustled my shaving and induced me to omit all breakfast but porridge Porridge is an institution in our house. I want my boys to incorporate the desirable traits of the Scotch, and have no other available means of assisting than by supplying plenty of porridge.

Concentration kept me at the game until a message from my stenographer broke in. At luncheon time I took another hasty dip into the maze, and at 4.30 was back in the sitting-room trying to find that girl’s arm. Dinner was an interruption, and Eliza, the maid, came in for a rebuke for her slowness in serving. We broke an engagement for the evening, as I really had no desire to go out. I always was a great home-man—but I didn’t mind giving the boys fifty cents to take in a “show” that night. Boys must have their fling.

I have a misty recollection of pulling myself upstairs sometime in the morning, with my wife watching me anxiously from the landing.

From that point my adventures with the picture puzzle have been collected from my wife. The thing had got on my nerves. I dreamt and ate pieces, and thought in comers, points and curves. To be sure, I remembered the more important events of the next day, such as the finding of that arm, but apart from that the story is my wife’s.

I made straight for the sitting-room the next morning, and fruit and porridge were served there. I stopped long enough to thresh Harry for asking fool questions about where his education was to come in, but I even interrupted the threshing to fit in a piece. I signed the cheque for the butcher’s bill without asking for a bill. To the office I would not go, and I have a faint recollection of hearing my wife tell someone over the ’phone that I was ill; and then she came and looked at me with mournful eyes. I also remember the family physician looking me over from the door.

At six-thirty my wife did succeed in drawing me away to dinner at which we were entertaining a couple of friends. During the meal I was absorbed in cutting my meat into fantastic shapes, and then piecing them together. I slid my knife between the fork tines and examined it critically to see if it was a match. Between courses I spent the time fitting the salt cellar, the olive dish, the knife handle, the water glass into the scallops in the edge of the centre-piece, and in matching the entree shells I had to reach for my neighbour’s before I found a satisfactory fit. When I helped the desert I first glanced at the mouths of my guests and served to match.

Just as soon as possible I bolted from the table for the puzzle. Nothing else mattered now.

Everything seemed to be at sixes and sevens in the picture puzzle when I resumed the “game.” It looked almost as if the pieces had been moved, but I knew this could not be, as the entire family had been with me at dinner. The guests left very early. I was so busy trying to finish a corner on some square thing that the world seemed made for nothing else. Not a piece could I match. Every piece remaining was tried from all sides.

My hair was wandering wildly over my eyes, my coat was off, a deep frown puckered my brow. I wandered excitedly from table to table. The pieces shook so in my fingers that even if they had matched they would never have reached their places.

I had proceeded far enough with the “game” to feel that there was a woman in it. I felt I might have known that, and I was wild at any woman balking me. My wife had never done so.

A woman! a woman!

With shut teeth I shoved a point viciously up into a corner. It did not fit. I sat down and seized the evening paper, trying to read it upside down. I leaped up again and jammed in another piece. I examined that woman from all sides but the back. She showed no consciousness that her belt buckle wasn’t straight or that her waist was not pulled down properly. Drat that woman! I thought fully as bad as that. I took a long breath and slowly ran my eye over the pieces. Ah, there it was! I seized it and lowered it carefully over the opening Something was wrong. I pressed it down. I slammed it down—and the corner broke off.

*

My wife fled from the room, leaving me pounding the pieces of that puzzle with a footstool. Harry came to the door, and with a whoop bolted for the kitchen, returning in a moment with a hatchet. He was going to help dad. While I was transforming those five hundred and four pieces into several thousands, Harry was attacking two of the tables with the hatchet, at the same time handing out encouragement to me.

“Go it, dad.” And I “go-ed” it with supreme delight.

“Give her an upper-cut, dad.”

I used all the blows I know.

“Wallop her. Knock her block off. Perforate her think-tank.”

I guess I did it all.

Blasphemy—such blasphemy as “Thunderin’ Jehosophat,” “Jiminy Crickets,” “Jumpin’ Judas”—flowed from my lips. And Harry elaborated with a proficiency that made me envious. Simpson happened to look in—and Simpson got his.

I was having more real satisfaction than I had had for many a day.

When my wife returned with the family physician, I was in bed sound asleep with my boots on. Harry was doing a picture puzzle with the pieces of the tables and making them fit with a hatchet.

After a day’s rest they broke the news to me. While I had been at dinner the doctor, fearing for my reason, had crept in and substituted parts of another puzzle for the unmatched pieces of mine.

So that it was no sign of failing power that I had been unable to handle that woman. I could have finished her all right—if she hadn’t first finished me.

Old Double-talks Compassion

Genealogical research has indicated that Philip Verrill Mighels was related to A. Hyatt Verrill. Both were prolific authors but there is no indication that the two ever met. There seems to be very little published about Philip Verrill Mighels; maybe we can fix that later on.

The Black Cat magazine was published from 1895 to 1922. The format of this issue is 9" tall by 5" wide, just about ideal for scanning so a PDF of the entire contents, June 1899, is HERE, including all of the advertisements!

The Black Cat

[#45 June 1899] (The Shortstory Publishing Company, 5¢, 42 p+ads, 9"x6")

• 1 · The Statement of Jared Johnson · Geraldine Bonner · ss
• 16 · The Horn of Marcus Brunder · Howard Reynolds · ss
• 21 · On the Trail of the Dolan Outfit · G. B. Dunham · ss
• 29 · She Said, "Come." · Louise Clark · ss
• 34 · Old Double-talk's Compassion · Philip Verrill Mighels · ss

Old Double-talk's Compassion.

By Philip Verrill Mighels

From The Black Cat magazine, June 1899, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, January 2014.

Mingled with the howl of the wind and the murmur of a score of Chinese voices, was a ceaseless chink and chink of gold. It was in a gambling den of Chinatown. Fumes of opium-tainted tobacco crept like wraiths through the air and all but overcame the two saucer-lamps, which cast a dull red glow on the eager Chinese faces. A dozen of the men were seated at a table, where the game was in progress; the others were standing behind, their countenances expressive of greed in various manners and degrees.

The cheerful rhythm of the precious metal issued from the murkiest corner. There a man was standing monotonously shaking a bag containing current coins of the realm. The practice was so common in the Chinese quarter that none of the individuals present paid the slightest attention. All of them knew that the coins were being reduced in weight by the constant striking together; all were aware that to burn the bag and thus secure the knocked-off dust of gold would be easy, and then that the coins would "pass" in trade as readily as any.

The tall Chinese to whom the gold belonged was confident of the honesty of the man who shook the bag, as well he might have been, for the man was white and he had once been a member of a sacred calling. He was known to the Chinese inhabitants by a name which signified Old Double-talk, a result of his having acted as court-interpreter in Chinese cases whenever a legal necessity arose. That he once had possessed another name there is no substantial reason to doubt, inasmuch as he had become so honored in his former Connecticut home that influential people thrust upon him the distinction of Missionary at large in the Canton province of China.

In a manner entirely innocent he had been tempted by curiosity to try the "taste" of a bead of opium, burned at the end of a pipe. Had the pipe been an octopus it could hardly have embraced him in a coil more resistless. Guilty and ashamed he resigned from his post and returned to his home, but a pipe and lamp and a five-tael tin of opium were cunningly concealed in his trunk. Then on a fatal night he was deep in his opium dreams and the lamp was overturned. His sister lifted and pushed him out at the window, only to fall herself in the fierce hot arms of the flames.

His social world, to which he dared not confess, refused him the boon of obscurity. Unable to bear himself in a false capacity burdened by self-accusation, he ran away from his friends, his relatives and his calling. Tramping for years he came at length to a western village at the edge of which a Chinatown existed. Fascinated, persuading himself that here he could work out his own repentance, he chose this spot for his living interment.

The environment was admirable, suited to many kinds of self-denial. He found himself readily ostracized from all association in the village proper, and rarely tempted to over-indulgence of food among the Chinese. The one particular battle which was rendered frequently too hard to fight was that between his resolution and his desire once more to taste a pipe, for the insidious fumes of opium were constantly in his nostrils.

Double-talk had various means of gaining his daily bread. Aside from the far-between opportunities of acting officially in court, on the returns of which he must certainly have failed to exist, he was jack-of-all-occupations in Chinatown. Thus he cured the bleeding backs of the donkeys employed by Kow Sup Fun and Wan Lee Toi to bring down wood from the mountains; he doctored the chickens, pigs and ducks of Suey Fat when ailment overtook them; he played the brass pan in the orchestra, whenever a funeral required the service; and he shook the bag of coins to wear off the metal.

He was well aware of the fact that to reduce in weight or to mutilate the coins of the country was prohibited by law. Nevertheless, he agitated the gold with vigor, his conscience rendered dull by hunger and fatigue. On that particular night he was wet, in addition to his usual unnurtured condition, for the rain had soaked him throughout the day. Moreover, he felt a certain parental responsibility, as he gazed from time to time into the depths of two great brown eyes at his knee which he found unfailingly lifted to his own.

Almost a part of the shadows, a small Chinese boy was clinging to his leg, with chubby, dimpled hands, winking wistfully in the smoke—a silent little chap, who regarded Old Double-talk with a love too great to be expressed. This small bronze bit of humanity spent nearly all his time with the man, always following him about, with a singular instinct for keeping on his trail, or holding fast to his hand when together they walked, or clinging to anything clutchable if both the hands happened to be engaged.

The child, who was called Luey Sing, was the first-born, and indeed the only-born, of Luey Hop, a venerable vendor of lizards which the learned converted into physic. As might be conjectured, Luey Hop was not a wealthy man. In addition to being poor he was vigorously ignored, if not disliked, by the Chinese population, having once committed the error of furnishing certain police with information detrimental to a large and illicit industry—the cooking of opium without a license.

Little Luey Sing shared, in a miniature manner, the ignominy thrust upon his father, yet he was inconsistently happy, for he enjoyed an undisputed possession of Double-talk for a friend and companion. This night, amidst the clatter of Chinese words and phrases, the crisp, clear sound of the buttons being pushed on the wires of a counter, and the metallic ring of the golden coins, the little follow looked upward in adoration so long that his neck was nearly ready to break. His eyes began to drop their curtains; his tiny fat fingers somewhat loosened their grip. He nodded and started and nodded again. At length with an effort he opened his big, wistful eves, as he noted the kindly, wrinkled face above bending thoughtfully down. Then, in a baby voice, he lisped: —

"Now Luey lay me down to theep."

"All right, little man," said Double-talk, glancing at a clock to assure himself his time was fully measured, "we'll trot along home." He carried the bag to a raw-boned Celestial who was running the fan-tan table and put it down. The Chinese glanced at the time-piece and paid ten cents from the money at his hand.

"Good-night," said Double-talk, without expecting an answer, and taking little limber Sing in his arms, he left the place and trudged away through the wet and glittering avenue of darkness.

Luey was sound asleep when the door of his father's dwelling was pushed quietly open, and he was therefore laid for a moment in his bed, to which his protector groped his way. When a candle sputtered out gushes of light. Old Double-talk stood white and amazed at what he saw.

The form of Luey Hop was half way only on a bunk; his face was on the floor. He was dead. How old and tired he looked!

Double-talk was harshly jarred by this unexpected sight. He had known the old man to be feeble and underfed; he had given all the comfort and all the food he could to this honest and down-trodden companion, but he had never suspected the shadow of death of being so near.

He took little Sing in his arms again and hurried to secure the attendance of Doctor Ah Kee. This fine old gentleman knew at a glance through his prodigious glasses that acute pneumonia, super-induced by the chill and wet of the day, had done its work rapidly. Luey Sing was fatherless, but not parentless; that is to say, he was now an orphan to whom Old Double-talk was foster-mother and foster-father in one. The Chinese visited sufficient of the sins of the departed on the son to warrant them in preserving a total indifference to the little fellow's being and to his adoption by a man of another color.

But the ceremonious people, however much they may have neglected Luey Hop during his life, stinted no part of the usual rites, now that he and his craving for sustenance were stilled. For several days, the weather being cold, they frightened off devils with suitable and probated noises, and burned the full allotment of punks at the shrine in the Joss-house, before the interment. At the end of the proper time the weazened old form was conveyed to the graveyard with appropriate orchestration.

Old Double-talk was obliged to refuse to play the brass pan on this occasion. He therefore attended with little Luey Sing holding to his hand, the only genuine mourner in all the noisy procession.

With masterful inconsequence the Chinese people, who had refused to assist in the maintenance of Luey Hop in life, had prepared a lavish and elaborate banquet for his use when at last he was dead. They saw his coffin covered in the grave and the mound roughly spaded into shape on top, when they set it all about with roasted pig, chickens and ducks, boiled rice, grease pudding and fried weeds. They set up lighted punks and burned no end of red paper to smoke out or keep off hungry demons; and then they went back to their lives of work, fan-tan and opium.

Double-talk looked hungrily on at the rite of decoration with food. He and little Luey had been less than half fed for the past three days, and by reason of his grief he had earned not a cent—not even the trifle which he ordinarily got for playing the pan at a burial.

That night, when his pangs had increased with the darkness, he was over-distressed by the moans of hunger which were uttered, now and again, by little Sing, in his sleep. It became too much to be endured. He blew out the candle, at length, and crushing on his battered hat, went forth in the frosty night. He turned to the north and pushed ahead rapidly, facing the fangs of the wind. He was hunched all up by the cold that crept to his marrow and tortured by waking dreams of the peace and ecstasy which a pipe of opium could bring. Doggedly he hurried on till he came to the graveyard gate. This he climbed, without a sound.

Quickly he stumbled across the unmarked mounds, where the Chinese were but napping before they should all be transported to sleep in China, and he went directly toward the grave of Luey Hop.

He was almost upon it when he suddenly floundered, and collided heavily with a human form. His hair crept upward; a chill shot down and up his spine; a feeling of horror alone prevented the cry which rose to his lips.

"Ugh," grunted the form, in a voice too thick for a ghost, and bounding to his feet one of the Pah Ute Indians whose regular predatorial visits to the graves of departed Celestials gave color to the story that the spirits of the dead devoured the banquet—a hearty but super-frightened buck—darted swiftly away to the sagebrush.

Old Double-talk was startled so thoroughly that his teeth began to chatter. Nevertheless, he realized that he was the dominant spirit of the evening, and he therefore made all possible haste to appropriate all of the funeral meats, for himself and Luey Sing, and then to beat a retreat the way he had come. He had robbed the dead. He permitted his conscience to freeze, for the sake of keeping alive the bodies of little Luey Sing and himself.

Day by day the severity of the winter increased. The snow became so deep that the donkeys could not be sent to the mountains, and in consequence there were not any bleeding backs to cure. Pigs and ducks and chickens left their diseases out in the cold. Litigation, or trials requiring a Chinese interpreter, were not even so much as on the calendar. And not every day did the gambling table accumulate sufficient of the golden coins to warrant a shaking.

Such a dearth of money and credit and chances for work prevailed in the village that violent means of gaining a bare subsistence had come into being. Robberies were frequent and nearly always accompanied, if not preceded, by arson. So great was the terror of the people that a citizens' union had been organized, and desperate men kept nightly watch in the streets. In secret they had also formed a vigilance committee, whose warning was out for all offenders to heed on pain of death.

So engrossed was Old Double-talk with his task of keeping the body and soul of little Sing together, and incidentally his own, that the state of affairs was quite without his ken. Thus he sat looking at the little bronze lad, one brilliant, moon-lit night. Sing had eaten a crust of bread in the morning and a crust the day before; the child invariably ate more than the man. All that day the great wistful eyes of the little chap had searched those of his friend, appealingly. To-night they were blazing with hunger although forever yearning in expression. There was no such thing as sleep in their solemn depths. The little fellow came to lay his head on his protector's knee.

"Sleepy, little man?" Old Double-talk inquired. "Want now I lay me down to sleep?"

The child shook his head.

"Hungry?" crooned the man.

Luey nodded, timidly.

"Bless your poor little heart, you're starving." He took the cold little chap in his arms and tried to rock him to sleep.

The man's mind was working oddly. He felt that anything, however desperate, was better than to let this helpless child succumb to the pangs of hunger; his conscience had ceased to be, in his anguish. The Chinese people had given all the aid they would. It was cheaper, to bury Luey Sing than to keep him.

Old Double-talk thought with composure, yes, eagerly, of robbing another grave, were there only a grave to rob. Why not kill some old Chinaman and get the food they would certainly leave on his mound, said his mind, He started at himself, so abhorrent was this foreign thought. Yet his calculating instinct pursued the idea to its end. They would keep the body so long that the child and himself might die before the feast was spread,

Little Luey Sing was still diffidently nodding to assure him of his hunger. It made the heart of the man bleed to see him.

A sudden mental picture occurred to his mind. He saw some laborers carrying potatoes to an elongated pyramid of them, which they were covering with straw and earth, to preserve the raw articles of food through the winter. He thought of the rabbits digging into this pile in the night to save their lives. It was theft to take those potatoes. He had never wilfully wronged any living being but himself; he had never lived any but a life of innocent self-destruction; but—this child that he loved was dying. A man has a right, he told himself, to preserve human life, even by desperate means. The idea got possession of his soul. He was frantic to be digging at the pile of potatoes. A wild, haggard look came in his face. The child saw it come and was frightened.

"What is it, little man?" said the foster-parent tenderly. "Was he awful tired and hungry? Never mind, old Ghee Sum will get him something to eat. Luey go to sleep—like a good little boy, and Ghee Sum won't be long."

In his haste he laid little Sing in his bed with all his clothing on. "But, wait, little man," he said, with a sense of shame, "we haven't said our prayers." He placed the child on its knees by the bunk and knelt there beside him, simply. When the wee Chinese chap had repeated the sweet, old-fashioned appeal of children, Old Double-talk remained kneeling a minute, to add his own petition, in a mumble. And when he arose to place little Luey in the bed and to kiss the soft wee face, a light of fatherly anguish was burning in his eyes.

"Good night, you poor little scamp," he said, somewhat hoarsely, "old Ghee Sum will soon be back with something nice."

An hour later, when he came furtively along through the shadows of the village, with a sack half filled with potatoes, he was startled, on turning, to see a sudden glow of fire athwart the sky, in the direction whence he had come. Cries arose from terrified women and angry men. A clangor of bells burst on the frosty air; a din of shouts, screaming whistles and reverberating thuds of horses' hoofs seemed to fill all the night. He felt all the fear in which his conscience was suddenly plunged. He started to run with his plunder.

Almost on the instant a watchman darted upon him. He dropped the sack and got away, only to dash into the arms of half a dozen men who were racing madly toward the fire. He was clutched by a dozen fierce and merciless hands. A score of maddened citizens quickly gathered about him. There was neither law nor order nor reason in the mob which soon collected in the street; and no one noticed a timid little form that ran to the shadows for concealment.

The roar of the firemen thundering by with their engine added confusion to the moment. Then a leader came pushing his way among the captors. He stilled their babel, and then they became truly grim and terrible.

There was no delay; there was simply the calm and awful determination to do their work and do it quickly. Immediately all were in motion, the vainly protesting prisoner in their midst, marching voicelessly away, their feet making crisp, hard clatter on the frozen ground.

When at length Old Double-talk was standing, bound, beneath the cross-beam of the cemetery gate, he knew their purpose. He knew that nothing could stop them now.

"God help you," he murmured, "you don't know what you are doing."

And then when at last those silent men had scattered to the four winds, and only the creak and creak of the rope on the beam, as something swung in the wind, made sound, a timid little form came slowly from the brush and approached the spot.

It was Luey Sing, who had followed unerringly, guided alone by his childish love and natural instinct. He could barely reach the ankles of his friend and protector, but these he clutched, with an odd little coo of joy, and throwing his arms about the unresponsive legs, laid his chilled little cheek against the cloth.

The creak and creak might have seemed like the chink and chink of the gold when Old Double-talk shook the bag; howbeit, the child was patient. He waited and waited for a word or a sign. He looked up wistfully to catch the twinkling answer from the eyes he knew and loved so well. Slowly his thin little body chilled through and through. Yet he made no complaint; he was waiting for the creak to cease.

At last, as a peaceful warmth and drowsiness began to overtake him, he timidly opened his lips.

"Now Luey lay me down to theep," he lisped in a whisper.

The old-time loving response failed to come. He waited, gazing yet more wistfully upward. His eyes were so weary and heavy. He tried again:

"Now Luey lay—me down to—theep

I play—the Lor'—my thoul—keep.

If I—thould die—befloe—wake,

I play—the—Lor'—my—thoul—t-a-k-e."

His eyes were closed. His arms were tight about the lifeless ankles. Breathing a sad little sigh he fell into the sweetest and longest of slumbers.

In the morning early the leader of the mob came guiltily out to the graveyard gate. He stood there awed, when he came in sight of the place and viewed the silent figure and the frozen little form of Luey Sing still clasping the stiffened knees.

"My God," said he, "the poor old man—the poor little kid."