Today's Stichomancy for Neal Stephenson

gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. "Damn soft hands--like a woman's. Aah!"

At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, "I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul! I'll 'tend to all the talking about this that's necessary, hear me? There's going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that isn't going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the house!"

But he himself read the papers, after dinner.

Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. "Well?" said Maxwell.

"I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got an idea. Why couldn't I

"I'll do it. It's a great sum of money, and besides"--she gave a curious smile--"it is not--wise to throw over a woman like me!"

For a moment or two, she remained smiling, and lightly tapping her fingers on the table. Suddenly she started, and her face blanched.

"What was that?"

"I heard nothing."

Mrs. Vandemeyer gazed round her fearfully.

"If there should be some one listening----"

"Nonsense. Who could there be?"

"Even the walls might have ears," whispered the other. "I tell

Secret Adversary

back. He took another little sip and then reached for a book which was lying on the table. I had not noticed it before. Altogether the proceedings of a desperate drunkard--weren't they? He opened the book and held it before his face. If this was the way he took to drink, then I needn't worry. He was in no danger from that, and as to any other, I assure you no human being could have looked safer than he did down there. I felt the greatest contempt for Franklin just then, while I looked at Captain Anthony sitting there with a glass of weak brandy-and-water at his elbow and reading in the cabin of his ship, on a quiet night--the quietest, perhaps the finest, of a prosperous passage. And if you wonder why I didn't leave off my

Chance

what made the jar and crash. On the first cut the long strip of bark went to the left and up against five little circular saws. Then the five pieces slipped out of sight down chutes. When the log was trimmed a man stationed near the huge band-saw made signs to those on the carriage, and I saw that they got from him directions whether to cut the log into timbers, planks, or boards. The heavy timbers, after leaving the saw, went straight down the middle of the mill, the planks went to the right, the boards in another direction. Men and boys were everywhere, each with a lever in hand. There was not the slightest cessation of the work. And a log forty feet long and six feet thick, which had taken hundreds of years to grow, was cut up in just four minutes.

The Young Forester