Today's Stichomancy for M. C. Escher

that for them the betrothal had neither dignity nor purity; that they held it to be as much a matter of bargain and sale as their worst amours. He would far rather have talked to the theological professors whose salaries he paid, for he saw that they had a sort of grave, formal tradition of the sacredness of marriage. And he had a right to claim that to him it was sacred, at least as yet; all the ideal side of his nature was suddenly developed; he walked in a dream; he even read Tennyson.

Sometimes he talked a little to his future brother-in-law, Harry,--assuming, as lovers are wont, that brothers see sisters

And silence slept on all, where Rua sorrowed and stood. But still from the shore of the bay the sound of the festival rang, And still the crowd in the High-place danced and shouted and sang.

Now over all the isle terror was breathed abroad Of shadowy hands from the trees and shadowy snares in the sod; And before the nostrils of night, the shuddering hunter of men Hurried, with beard on shoulder, back to his lighted den. "Taheia, here to my side!" - "Rua, my Rua, you!" And cold from the clutch of terror, cold with the damp of the dew, Taheia, heavy of hair, leaped through the dark to his arms; Taheia leaped to his clasp, and was folded in from alarms.

Ballads

and Wilbur himself had accounted for the seventh.

As Wilbur and Moran came around the cabin they saw the "Bertha Millner's" Chinamen in a group, not far from the water's edge, reassembled after the fight--panting and bloody, some of them bare to the belt, their weapons still in their hands. Here and there was a bandaged arm or head; but their number was complete--or no, was it complete?

"Ought to be one more," said Wilbur, anxiously hastening for-ward.

As the two came up the coolies parted, and Wilbur saw one of them, his head propped upon a rolled-up blouse, lying ominously still on the trampled sand.

"Perhaps I can do it," he said. "I have been doing something else, but--well, I will come out to-night."

We were very silent during the trip back to Sunnyside. I watched Gertrude closely and somewhat sadly. To me there was one glaring flaw in her story, and it seemed to stand out for every one to see. Arnold Armstrong had had no key, and yet she said she had locked the east door. He must have been admitted from within the house; over and over I repeated it to myself.

That night, as gently as I could, I told Louise the story of her stepbrother's death. She sat in her big, pillow-filled chair, and heard me through without interruption. It was clear that she

The Circular Staircase