who had two or three times come to the office to see Mr. Brockelsby
and the other as Dr. Lucius Darst, a young eye and ear specialist who
within the space of but a few days had established his office in the
building. To neither of these gentlemen, however, was Mr. Middleton
known.

"I want you to get off on this floor with me," said Dr. McAllyn to his
medical confrere. "I may want your assistance a bit. You see," he went
on, as they got out of the elevator and started down the corridor with
Mr. Middleton just behind, "we had a banquet last night of the Society
of Andrew Jackson's Wars, and my friend Brockelsby got too much
aboard. He was turned over to me to take to his home, but just as we
were leaving, I received an urgent call. So the best I could do was to
drive by here and start him toward his office and go on. He could
navigate after a fashion and doubtless spent the night all right in
his office, and I would take no farther trouble with him but for the
fact that he has an important case to-day. So I want to fix him up,
and as I haven't much time, you can be of service to me."

"Ah, ha," said Mr. Middleton to himself, "I'll just lie low until they
have given up trying to get in and have gone."

But they did not go away. To his consternation, they opened the door
and walked in, for though he had put the key in the lock when he had
closed the door behind him to parley with Chauncy Stackelberg, he had
walked away without turning it! They would find Mr. Brockelsby! Great
though Dr. McAllyn was, he would hardly be likely to recognize a
condition of suspended animation. Unless Mr. Middleton confessed,
there was danger that the famous forensic orator would be buried
alive. And if he confessed, what would the consequences be to himself?
The fact that in whatever event he would lose his place and be a
marked and disgraced man, was the very least thing to consider. He was
threatened with far more serious dangers than that. First, there would
be the vengeance the law would take upon him for meddling with and
tampering with medical matters. But even if he had been a physician,
would the medical faculty look otherwise than with horror upon this
rash and wanton experimenting with the strange and unholy practices of
India? Even a medical man would be arrested for malpractice and for
depriving a fellow being of the use of his faculties. The penitentiary
stared him in the face.

He could not endure not to know what was taking place within. He must
have knowledge of everything in order to know what moves to make and
when to make them. He let himself through the outer door of Mr.
Brockman's private office, and by taking a position by the door
communicating between this office and the main office, he could hear
everything in safety.

"Shall I send for an undertaker?" asked Dr. Darst.

At these chilling words, Mr. Middleton was about to open the private
office door and rush in and confess all. He had begun to place the key
in the lock, when a joyful thought stayed his hand. Let them bury Mr.
Brockelsby. He would dig him up. He laughed noiselessly in his intense
relief. But hark, what does he hear?

"Darst, this is an unusual case."

"Yes?" said Dr. Darst mildly.

"A strange, a remarkable case. Darst, if we do not examine this case,
we are traitors to science. Darst, we must take him to the medical
school. When we are through, we'll sew him all again and bring him
back here, or leave him almost any place where he can be found easily.
He will be just as good to bury then as now, nobody hurt, and the
cause of science advanced. Observe, Darst, dead, absolutely dead, yet
with no rigor mortis. Dead, and yet as if he slept. If need be, we
will pursue to the inmost recesses of his being the secret of his
demise."

Mr. Middleton was nigh to falling to the floor. The succession of hope
and fear had taken from him all resolution. Of what use would it be to
exhume Mr. Brockelsby after the doctors had cut him up? The impulse to
rush in and confess had spent itself and he was now cravenly drifting
with the tide. All judgment, all power of reflection had departed from
him. He was now only a pitiable wretch with scarcely strength to stand
by the door and listen, unable to originate any thought, any action.

"How are you going to get him out of here?" asked Dr. Darst.

"In a box. You don't suppose I'd carry him down and put him in a
hack?"

"But suppose they get to looking for him? It is known that he came
here. A box goes out of here to be taken to the medical school, a long
box that might hold a man. You and I are the ones who hire the men who
carry the box."

"Who said a long box that might hold a man? It will be a short, rather
tall box, packing-case shape. Remember, he is as limber as you are and
can be accommodated to any position. He will be put in it sitting bolt
upright. It will be only half the length of a man, with nothing in its
shape to suggest that it might hold a man. Who said take it to the
medical school from here? I hire a drayman to take a box to the Union
Depot. He dumps it there on the sidewalk near the places for in-going
and out-going baggage. Ostensibly going to carry it as excess baggage.
We fiddle around until he goes, then call up some other drayman in the
crowd hanging about and take a box just arrived from Milwaukee, St.
Paul, any place the drayman wants to think, out to the college. As for
the inquiry that will be made concerning the whereabouts of
Brockelsby, rest easy on that point. He frequently goes off on sprees
of several days' duration and his absence from home is of such common
occurrence that his wife won't begin to hunt him up until we are
through with him and have got him back here, or have dumped him in
front of some building with his neck broken, showing that he fell out
of some story above."

All this Mr. Middleton heard as he leaned against the door jamb,
swallowing, swallowing, with never a thing in his mouth since the
night before, yet swallowing. He heard Dr. Darst go after a box. He
heard men deposit it in the corridor outside. He heard the two doctors
take it in when the men had gone. He heard it go heavily out into the
corridor again after a long interval. He heard more men come, come to
carry it away, and he pulled himself together with a supreme effort
and followed. He saw the box loaded on a dray. With his eye constantly
on it, he threaded his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, followed
it on its way across the river to the Union Depot. With never a hope
in his heart that anything could possibly occur to save him from a
final confession and its consequences, humanlike postponing the evil
hour as long as he could.

The box was dumped upon the sidewalk before the depot. The two medical
men stood leaning upon it, waiting for the drayman to depart. The evil
moment had arrived. Once away from the depot, in the less congested
streets in the direction of the medical college, the dray would go too
fast for him to follow. He approached. He must speak now. No, no. He
need not follow the dray. That was not necessary. He could get to the
medical school before they could have time to do injury to Mr.
Brockelsby. It would be safe to let the box get out of his sight for
that little time. He would tell at the medical college.

"Yes, as soon as we get him there," said Dr. McAllyn, "we'll put him
in the pickle."

Mr. Middleton sprang forward and put an appealing hand upon the
shoulder of either doctor. With a sudden start that caused him to
start in turn, each wheeled about. For a moment, he could say nothing
and stood with palsied lips while they gave back his stare. Gave back
his stare? All at once his mouth came open and these were the words he
heard issue forth:

"Sirs, I arrest you for stealing the body of Mr. Augustus Alfonso
Brockelsby, attorney-at-law."

He who had just now been an abject, grovelling wretch, was of a sudden
come to be a lord among men. The practitioners making no reply, he
continued:

"Are you going to be sensible enough to make no trouble, or shall I
have to call yonder officer?"

Mr. Middleton considered this quite a master stroke. By the assumption
of a pretended authority over the neighboring policeman he would
forestall any possibility of resistance and question as to what
authority he represented. But he need have had no fears on this score.
The doctors were too alarmed to do otherwise than submit to his
pleasure, too thoroughly convinced that none but a detective could
have had knowledge of the contents of the box. But Dr. McAllyn did
attach a significance to what Mr. Middleton had said, a significance
natural to one so well acquainted with the devious ways of the great
city as he was.

"Well," he said, with a sardonic smile, "you needn't call in help. We
stand pat. How much is it going to cost us?"

Then did Mr. Middleton perceive he was delivered from a dilemma, a
dilemma unforeseen, but which even if foreseen, he could not have
forearmed against. After he had arrested the doctors, how would he
have disposed of them and the box containing Mr. Brockelsby? How could
he have released the doctors and carried off the box in a manner that
would not excite their suspicions? If he had, in pretended leniency
and soft-heartedness told them they were free, the absence of any
apparent motive for this action would have instantly caused them to
suspect that for some unknown and probably unrighteous reason, he
desired possession of the body of Mr. Brockelsby and thus would ensue
a series of complications that would make the ruse of the arrest but a
leap from the frying pan into the fire. But now Dr. McAllyn had
supplied the motive.

"Sirs," said Mr. Middleton, with an air of virtue that was well suited
to the character of the sentiments he now began to enunciate, "you
deserve punishment. You have been taken in the act of committing a
crime that is particularly revolting,--stealing a corpse. Dr. McAllyn,
you have been apprehended in foul treason against friendship. You have
stolen the body of a comrade. You have meditated cruel and shocking
mutilation of this body, giving to the horror-stricken eyes of the
frantic widow the mangled and defaced flesh that was once the goodly
person of her husband, leaving her to waste her life in vain and
terrible speculations as to where and how he encountered this awful
death with its so dreadful wounds."

"It was for the sake of science," interpolated Dr. McAllyn, in no
little indignation. "If from the insensible clay of the dead we may
learn that which will save suffering and prolong existence for the
living, well may we disregard the ancient and ridiculous sentiment
regarding corpses, a relic of the ancient heathen days when it was
believed that this selfsame body of this life was worn again in
another world."

"I will not engage in an antiquarian discussion with you, sir, as to
the origin of this sentiment. Suffice to say it exists and is one of
the most powerful sentiments that rules mankind. You have attempted to
violate it, to outrage it. However you may look upon your action, the
penitentiary awaits you. Yet one can well hesitate to pronounce the
word that condemns a fellow man to that living death. It is not the
mere punishment itself. The dragging years will pass, but what will
you be when they have passed? We no longer brand the persons of
convicts, but none the less does the iron sear their souls and none
the less does the world see with its mind's eye the scorched word
'convict' on their brows, so long as they live. In the capacity of
judge, were I one, I might use such limit of discretion as the law
allows in making your punishment lighter or heavier, but the disgrace
of it, no one can mitigate. Therefore, that you may receive some
measure of the punishment you deserve, and yet not be blasted for
life, I will accept a monetary consideration and set you free."

"Oh, you will, will you?" said Dr. McAllyn. "How much lighter or
heavier will you in your capacity as judge make this impost?"

"I will not take my time in replying to your slurs in kind. You, Dr.
McAllyn, as the one primarily responsible, as the leader who induced
Dr. Darst to enter this conspiracy, as the one most to be reproached,
in that Mr. Brockelsby was your friend, as the one by far the most
able to pay, you shall pay $1,200. Dr. Darst shall pay $200. This is a
punishment by no means commensurate with your crime. By this forfeit,
shall you escape prison and disgrace."

"Of course you know that I have no such sum as that about me," said
Dr. McAllyn. "I will write you a check."

"I am not so green as I look," said Mr. Middleton, assuming an easy
sitting posture upon the box containing the mortal envelope of Mr.
Brockelsby. "You may dispatch Dr. Darst with a check to get the money
for you and himself. You will remain here as a hostage until his
return."

Accordingly, Dr. Darst departed and Mr. Middleton sat engrossed in
reflection upon the chain of unpleasant circumstances that had forced
upon him the unavoidable and distasteful rôle of a bribe-taker. Yet
how else could he have carried off the part he had assumed? How else
could he have obtained custody of Mr. Brockelsby? And surely the
doctors richly deserved punishment. It was not meet that they should
go scot free and in no other way could he bring it about that
retribution should be visited upon them.

"It is all here," said Mr. Middleton, when he had counted the bills
brought by Dr. Darst. "I shall now see that Mr. Brockelsby is taken
back to the office whence you took him."

"Pardon me," said Dr. Darst, "how in the world did you know we took
him from his office? How did you ferret it all out?"

"I cannot tell you that," said Mr. Middleton. "I shall take him back
to the office. He will be found there later in the day, just as you
found him. You are wise enough to make no inquiries concerning him, to
watch for no news of developments. Indeed, to make in some measure an
alibi, should it be needed, you had better leave town by next train
for the rest of the day. If it were known you were with Mr. Brockelsby
at any time, might it not be thought that you were responsible for the
condition he was found in?"

The doctors boarded the very next train, and Mr. Middleton, serene in
the knowledge that no one would disturb him now, had the box taken
back and set up in the main office. A slight thump in the box as it
was ended up against the wall, caused Mr. Middleton to believe that
Mr. Brockelsby was now resting on his head, but he resolved to allow
this unavoidable circumstance to occasion him no disquiet. Going to a
large department store where a sale of portières was in progress, he
purchased some portières and a number of other things. The portières
he draped over the box, concealing its bare pine with shimmering
cardinal velvet and turning it into the semblance of a cabinet. Lest
any inquisitive hand tear it away, he placed six volumes of Chitty and
a bust of Daniel Webster upon the top and tacked two photographs of
Mr. Brockelsby upon the front. Confident that no one would disturb the
receptacle containing his employer, he went into court and after a
short but exceedingly spirited legal battle in which he displayed a
forensic ability, a legal lore, and a polished eloquence which few of
the older members of the Chicago bar could have equalled, he won a
signal victory.

Although it was not his intention to set about restoring Mr.
Brockelsby until an hour that would ensure him against likelihood of
interruption, he returned to the office to see if by any untoward
mischance anybody could have interfered with the box. To his surprise,
he found Mrs. Brockelsby seated before that object of vertu with her
eye straying abstractedly over the cardinal portières, the photographs
of Mr. Brockelsby, the bust of Daniel Webster, and the volumes of
Chitty.

"Oh, Mr. Middleton," exclaimed the lady. "Mr. Brockelsby did not come
home to-day and they tell me he wasn't in court."

"No, he was not in court," said Mr. Middleton.

"Oh, where, oh, where can he be!" moaned Mrs. Brockelsby.

Mr. Middleton being of the opinion that this question was merely
exclamatory, ejaculatory in its nature, of the kind orators employ to
garnish and embellish their discourse and which all books of rhetoric
state do not expect or require an answer, accordingly made no answer.
He was, nevertheless, somewhat disturbed by the poor lady's grief and
wished that it were possible to restore her husband to her instantly.

"Oh, I have wanted to see him so, I have wanted him so! Oh, where can
he be, Mr. Middleton! I must find him. I cannot endure it longer. I
will offer a reward to anyone who will bring him home within
twenty-four hours, to anyone who will find him. Oh, oh, oh, oh! I will
give $200. I will give it to you, yourself, if you will find him.
Write a notice to that effect and take it to the newspaper offices."

This great distress on the part of the lady was all contrary to what
Dr. McAllyn had said concerning her indifference to the absence of her
spouse and caused Mr. Middleton to feel very much like a guilty
wretch. As he wrote out the notices for the papers, he reiterated
assurances that Mr. Brockelsby would turn up before morning, while the
partner of the missing barrister continued her heartbroken wailing and
the cause of it all was driven well-nigh wild.

"Oh, if you only knew!" she said, as Mr. Middleton was about to depart
for the newspaper offices. "Day after to-morrow, I am going to
Washington to attend a meeting of the Federation of Woman's Clubs.
That odious Mrs. LeBaron is going to spring a diamond necklace worth
two thousand dollars more than mine. Augustus must come home in time
to sign a check so I can put three thousand dollars more into mine."

A great load soared from Mr. Middleton's mind and blithe joy reigned
there instead.

"Mrs. Brockelsby, I'll leave no stone unturned. I'll bring you your
husband before breakfast," and escorting the lady to her carriage and
handing her in with the greatest deference and most courtly gallantry,
he set forth for one of the more famous of the large restaurants which
are household words among the elite of Chicago. Mr. Middleton had
never passed its portals, but with fourteen hundred dollars in his
pocket and two hundred more in sight, he felt he could afford to give
himself a good meal and break the fast he had kept since the evening
before, for in the crowded events of the day, he had found time to
refresh himself with nothing more substantial than an apple and a bag
of peanuts, or fruit of the Arachis hypogea.

As he sat down at a table in the glittering salle-à-manger, what was
his great surprise and even greater delight, to see seated opposite,
just slowly finishing his dessert--a small bowl of sherbet--habited in
a perfectly-fitting frock coat with a red carnation in the lapel, the
urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having
exchanged mutual expressions of pleasure at this unexpected encounter,
Mr. Middleton, overjoyed and elated at the successes of the day, began
to pour into the ears of the prince a relation of the events that had
resulted from the gift of the treatise of the learned hakim of Madras,
which is in India. He told everything from the beginning to the end.

"In the morning," he said in conclusion, "I take Mr. Brockelsby home
in a cab and get the two hundred dollars."

"Alas, alas!" said Achmed mournfully, his great liquid brown eyes
resting sorrowfully upon Mr. Middleton. "What a corrupting effect the
haste to get rich has upon American youth. My friend, it cannot be
that you intend to take the two hundred dollars?"

"But I find old Brock, don't I?'

"That is precisely what you do not do. You know where he is. You put
him there. How can you say you found him?"

"All right, I won't do it," said Mr. Middleton, abashed at Achmed's
reproof, a reproof his conscience told him was eminently deserved.

"I thank Allah," said the prince, "that I am an Arab and not an
American. The fortunes of my line, its glories, were not won in the
vulgar pursuits of trade, in the chicanery of business, in the shady
paths of speculation, in the questionable manipulation of stocks and
bonds. It was not thus that the ancient houses of the nobility of
Europe and the Orient built up their honorable fortunes. Never did the
men of my house parley with their consciences, never did they strike a
truce with their knightly instincts in order to gain gold. Ah, no,
no," mused the prince, looking pensively up at the gaily decorated
ceiling as he reflected upon the glories of his line; "it was in the
noble profession of arms, the illustrious practice of warfare that we
won our honorable possessions. At the sacking of Medina, the third
prince of our house gained a goodly treasure of gold and precious
stones, and founded our fortune. In warfare with the Wahabees, we
acquired countless herds and the territories for them to roam upon. By
descents across the Red Sea into the realms of the Abyssinians, we
took hundreds of slaves. From the Dey of Aden we acquired one hundred
thousand sequins as the price of peace. In the sacking of the cities
of Hedjaz and Yemen and even the dominions of Oman, did we gallantly
gain in the perilous and honorable pursuit of war further store of
treasure. Ah, those were brave days, those days of old, those knightly
days of old! Faugh, I am out of tune with this vile commercial country
and this vile commercial age."

The prince arose as he uttered these last words and in his rhapsody
forgetting the presence of Mr. Middleton, without a farewell he
stalked through the great apartment, absentmindedly, though gracefully
twirling a pair of pearl gray gloves in the long sensitive fingers of
his left hand. A little hush fell upon the brilliant assemblage and
many a bright eye dwelt admiringly upon the elegant person, so
elegantly attired, of the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe
of Al-Yam.

For some time Mr. Middleton sat plunged in abstraction, toying with
the three kinds of dessert he had ordered, as he meditated upon the
words of the emir. At last rousing himself, he had finished the
marrons glacées and was about to begin upon a Nesselrode pudding, when
he heard himself addressed, and looking up saw before him a young
woman of an exceedingly prepossessing appearance. She was richly
dressed with a quiet elegance that bespoke her a person of good taste.
Laughing, roguish eyes illuminated a piquant face in which were to be
seen good sense, ingenuousness and kindness, mingled with
self-reliance and determination. Mr. Middleton knew not whether to
admire her most for the beautiful proportions of her figure, the
loveliness of her face, or the fine mental qualities of which her
countenance gave evidence. With a delightful frankness in which there
was no hint of real or pretended embarrassment, she said:

"Pray pardon this intrusion on the part of a total stranger. I have
particular reasons for desiring to know the name and station of the
gentleman who left you a short time ago, and knowing no one else to
ask, have resolved to throw myself upon your good nature. I will ask
of you not to require the reasons of me, assuring you that they are
perhaps not entirely unconnected with the welfare of this gentleman. I
observed from your manner toward one another that you were
acquaintances and that it was no chance conversation between
strangers. He is, I take it, an Italian."

Without pausing to reflect that the emir might not be at all pleased
to have this young woman know of his identity, Mr. Middleton exclaimed
hastily and with a gesture of expostulation:

"Oh, no! He is not a Dago," and then after a pause he remarked
impressively, "He is an Arab," and then after a still longer pause, he
said still more impressively, "He is the Emir Achmed Ben Daoud,
hereditary prince of the tribe of Al-Yam, which ranges on the borders
of that fertile and smiling region of Arabia known as Yemen, or Arabia
the Happy."

"He is not a Dago!" said the young woman, clasping her hands with
delighted fervor.

"He is not a Dago!" said another voice, and Mr. Middleton became aware
that at his back stood a second young woman scarcely less charming
than the first. "He is not a Dago!" she repeated, scarcely less
delighted than the first.

Mr. Middleton arose and assumed an attitude which was at once
indicative of proper deference toward his fair questioners and enabled
him the better to feast his entranced eyes upon them. Moreover, on all
sides he observed that people were looking at them and he needed no
one to tell him that his conversation with these two daughters of the
aristocracy was causing the assemblage to regard him as an individual
of social importance. He gave the emir's address upon Clark Street and
after dwelling some time upon his graces of person and mind, related
how it was that this Eastern potentate was resident in the city of
Chicago in a comparatively humble capacity.

"His brother is shut up in a vermillion tower."

"Vermillion, did you say?" breathlessly asked the first young lady.

"Oh, how romantic!" exclaimed the second young lady. "A tower of
vermillion! Is he good looking, like this one? Do you suppose he will
come here? Oh, Mildred, I must meet him. And the imam of Oman is going
to give the vermillion tower to the brother, when he is released. We
could send one of papa's whalebacks after it. What a lovely house on
Prairie Avenue it would make. 'The Towers,' we would call it. No,
'Vermillion Towers.' How lovely it would sound on a card, 'Wednesdays,
Vermillion Towers.' We must get him out. Can't we do it?"

"If it were in this country," said Mr. Middleton, "I would engage to
get him out. I would secure a writ of habeas corpus, or devise other
means to speedily release him. But unfortunately, I am not admitted to
practice in the dominions of Oman. But I do not pity the young man.
One could well be willing to suffer incarceration in a tower of
vermillion, if he knew he were an object of solicitude to one so fair
as yourself. One could wear the gyves and shackles of the most
terrible tyranny almost in happiness, if he knew that such lovely eyes
grew moist over his fate and such beauteous lips trembled when they
told the tale of his imprisonment."

Now such gallant speeches were all very well in the days of
knee-breeches and periwigs, but in this age and in Chicago, they are
an anachronism and the two young ladies started as if they had
suddenly observed that Mr. Middleton had on a low-cut vest, or his
trousers were two years behind the times, and somewhat curtly and
coolly making their adieus, they sailed rapidly away, leaving Mr.
Middleton--who was not the most obtuse mortal in the world--to
savagely fill with large pieces of banana pie the orifice whence had
lately issued the words which had cut short his colloquy with the two
beauties. He deeply regretted that in his association with Prince
Achmed he had fallen into a flowery and Oriental manner of speech and
resolved henceforth to eschew such fashion of discourse.

The clocks were solemnly tolling the hour of midnight when Mr.
Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby rubbed his eyes and sat up in the
revolving chair in the main office of his suite. Mr. Middleton was
standing near, hastily putting away a razor. A warm odor lay on the
still air of the room.

"Hello, isn't it daylight yet?" asked Mr. Brockelsby. The hot cakes
that had but lately been applied to his shaven crown, seemed to have
dispelled the fogs of intoxication and he was master of himself.

"It is twelve o'clock," said Mr. Middleton.

"Twelve! Why, it was three when I left the banquet table. Twelve!"

"Twelve," said Mr. Middleton, pointing gravely to the clock on the
desk.

"It--is--twelve. Don't tell me it is the day after."

"I am compelled to do so. You were at the banquet of the Sons of
Andrew Jackson's Wars, twenty-four hours ago."

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Mr. Brockelsby, thrusting his hands through
his hair, or rather making the motion of doing so. "Great Scott!" he
repeated, "I am bald-headed. What the devil have I been into? Where
the devil have I been?"

"I found you here this morning. Your wife has been here."

"Oh, lord! Oh, lord! What did she say when she saw me dead to the
world--and bald-headed?"

"She did not see you. I had concealed you."

"Good boy, good boy."

"She offered me two hundred dollars reward to bring you home," and Mr.
Middleton related all that Mrs. Brockelsby had said.

"It would be all off when she saw me bald-headed. What the devil
wouldn't she suspect? I don't know. I would say I didn't know where I
had been. That would certainly sound fishy. It would sound like a
preposterous excuse to cover up something pretty questionable. People
don't go out in good society and get their heads shaved. She's pretty
independent and uppish now. She said the next time she knew of me
cutting up any didoes, she would get a divorce. She comes into two
hundred thousand from her grandfather's estate in six months and she's
pretty independent. Say, my boy, can't you take a check for the money
she wants? She's going to Washington to-morrow. Tell her I went out of
town and sent the money. I _will_ go out of town. But the boys will
see my bald head. Where do you suppose I was? What sort of crowd was I
with? I must have a wig. You must get it for me. The boys would josh
me to death, and if the story got to my wife it would be all off. I'll
go to Battle Creek and get a new lot of hair started."

Mr. Middleton sat down and wrote busily for a moment. He handed a
sheet of paper to Mr. Brockelsby.

"What's this? You resign? You're not going to help me out?"

"I am no longer in your employ. I will undertake to do all you ask of
me for a proper compensation, say one hundred and fifty a day for two
days."

"What?" screamed Mr. Brockelsby. "This is robbery, extortion,
blackmail."

"It is what you often charge yourself. Very well. Get your own wig and
be seen on the streets going after it. Leave your wife to wonder why I
do not come to report what progress is made in the search for you and
to start a rigorous investigation herself. I am under no obligations
not to ease her worry, to calm her disturbed mind by telling her I
have found you. She'll be hot foot after you then."

"She'd spot the wig at once. It would fool others, but not her. She'd
see I had been jagged. You've got me foul. I'll have to accede to your
terms. You'll not give me away?"

"Sir, I would not, in this, my first employment as an independent
attorney, be so derelict to professional honor, as to betray the
secrets of my client. We have chosen to call this three hundred
dollars--a check for which you will give me in advance--payment for
the services I am about to perform. In reality, I consider it only
part of what you owe for the miserably underpaid services of the past
three years."

As Mr. Middleton wended his way homeward, it was with some melancholy
that he recalled how, on previous occasions when good fortune had
added to his stock of wealth, he had rejoiced in it because he saw his
dreams of marriage with the young lady of Englewood approaching
realization more and more. But now they had drifted apart. Not once
had he seen her since that fatal night. On several evenings he had
made the journey to Englewood and walked up and down before her house,
but not so much as her shadow on the curtain had he seen. Let her make
the first move toward a reconciliation. If she expected him to do so
after her treatment of him, she was sadly mistaken.

_The Adventure of Achmed Ben Daoud._

Being curious to hear of the young ladies who had inquired concerning
the emir in the restaurant, and to learn what their connection with
that prince might be, Mr. Middleton repaired to the bazaar on Clark
Street on the succeeding night. But the emir was not in. Mesrour
apparently having experienced one of those curious mental lesions not
unknown in the annals of medicine, where a linguist loses all memory
of one or more of the languages he speaks, while retaining full
command of the others--Mesrour having experienced such a lesion, which
had, at least temporarily, deprived him of his command of the English
language, Mr. Middleton was unable to learn anything that he desired
to know, until bethinking himself of the fact that alcohol loosens the
thought centers and that by its agency Mesrour's atrophied brain cells
might be stimulated, revivified, and the coma dispelled, he made
certain signs intelligible to all races of men in every part of the
world and took the blackamore into a neighboring saloon, where, after
regaling him with several beers, he learned that only an hour before
an elegant turnout containing two young women, beautiful as houris,
had called for the emir and taken him away.

"He done tole me that if I tole anybody whar he was gwine, he'd
bowstring me and feed mah flesh to the dawgs."

Mr. Middleton shuddered as he heard this threat, so characteristically
Oriental.

"Where _was_ he going?" he inquired with an air of profound
indifference and irrelevance, signalling for another bottle of beer.

The blackamore silently drank the beer, a gin fizz, and two Scotch
high-balls, his countenance the while bearing evidence that he was
struggling with a recalcitrant memory.

"'Deed, I doan' know, suh," said Mesrour finally. "He never done tole
me."

Though Mr. Middleton called three times during the next week, he did
not find the emir in. Nor could Mesrour give any information
concerning his master's whereabouts. However, in the society news of
the Sunday papers, appeared at the head of several lists of persons
attendant upon functions, one A. B. D. Alyam, and this individual was
included among those at a small dinner given by Misses Mildred and
Gladys Decatur. As Mildred was the name of one of the young ladies who
had accosted him in the restaurant, Mr. Middleton felt quite certain
that this A. B. D. Alyam was none other than Achmed Ben Daoud, emir of
the tribe of Al-Yam.

On the tenth day, Mesrour informed Mr. Middleton that the emir had
left word to make an appointment with him for seven o'clock on the
following evening, at which time Mr. Middleton came, to find the
accomplished prince sitting at a small desk made in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, engaged in the composition of a note which he was inscribing
upon delicate blue stationery with a gold mounted fountain pen.
Arising somewhat abruptly and offering his hand at an elevation in
continuity of the extension of his shoulder, the emir begged the
indulgence of a few moments and resumed his writing. He was arrayed in
a black frock coat and gray trousers and encircling his brow was a
moist red line that told of a silk hat but lately doffed. "Give the
gentleman a cup of tea," said he to Mesrour, looking up from the note,
which now completed, he was perusing with an air that indicated
satisfaction with its chirography, orthography, and literary style. At
last, placing it in an envelope and affixing thereto a seal, he turned
and ordering Mesrour to give Mr. Middleton another cup of tea, he
lighted a cigarette and began as follows:

"This is the last time you will see me here. My lease expires
to-morrow and my experience as a retail merchant, in fact, as any sort
of merchant, is over. On this, the last evening that we shall meet in
the old familiar way, the story I have to relate to your indulgent
ears is of some adventures of my own, adventures which have had their
final culmination in a manner most delightful to me, and in which
consummation you have been an agent. Indeed, but for your friendship I
should not now be the happy man I am. Without further consuming time
by a preamble which the progress of the tale will render unnecessary,
I will proceed.

"Last summer, I spent a portion of the heated term at Green Lake,
Wisconsin. I know that sentiment in this city is somewhat unequally
divided upon the question of the comparative charms of Green Lake and
Lake Geneva and that the former resort has not acquired a vogue equal
to that of the latter, but I must say I greatly prefer Green Lake. I
have never been at Lake Geneva, it is true, but nevertheless, I prefer
Green Lake.

"The hotel where I stayed was very well filled and the manager was
enjoying a highly prosperous season. Yet though there were so many
people there I made no acquaintances in the first week of my sojourn.
Nor in the second week did I come to know more than three or four, and
they but slightly. I was, in truth, treated somewhat as an object of
suspicion, the cause of which I could not at first imagine. I was
newer to this country and its customs and costumes there a year ago.
Previous to starting for the lake, I had purchased of a firm of
clothiers farther up this street, Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer, a
full outfit for all occasions and sports incident upon a vacation at a
fashionable resort. I had not then learned that one can seldom make a
more fatal mistake than to allow a clothier or tailor to choose for
you. It is true that these gentry have in stock what persons of
refinement demand, but they also have fabrics and garments bizarre in
color and cut, in which they revel and carry for apparently no other
reason than the delectation of their own perverted taste, since they
seldom or never sell them. But at times they light upon some one whose
ignorance or easy-going disposition makes him a prey, and they send
him forth an example of what they call a well-dressed man. More
execrably dressed men than Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer and most of
the other parties in the clothing business, are seldom to be found in
other walks of life. In my ignorance of American customs, I entrusted
myself to their hands with the result that my garments were
exaggerated in pattern and style and altogether unsuited to my dark
complexion and slim figure. But in the wearing of these garments I
aggravated the original sartorial offence into a sartorial crime. With
my golf trousers and white ducks I wore a derby hat. For nearly a week
I wore with a shirt waist a pair of very broad blue silk suspenders
embroidered in red. All at once I awoke to a realization that the
others did not wear their clothes as I did and set myself to imitate
them with the result that my clothes were at least worn correctly. The
mischief was largely done, however, before this reform, and nothing I
could do would alter the cut and fabric.

"My clothes were not the only drawbacks to my making acquaintances. I
was entirely debarred from a participation in the sports of the place.
I knew nothing of golf. A son of the desert, I could no more swim than
fly, and so far from being able to sail a boat, I cannot even manage a
pair of oars. I could only watch the others indulge in their
divertissements, a lonely and wistful outsider.

"Yet despite all this, I could perceive that I was not without
interest to the young ladies. Partially as an object of amusement at
first, but not entirely that, even at first, for the sympathetic eyes
of some of them betrayed a gentle compassion.

"Among the twenty or so young ladies at our hotel, were two who would
attract the attention and excite the admiration of any assemblage, two
sisters from Chicago, beautiful as houris. In face and figure I have
never seen their equal. Their cheeks were like the roses of Shiraz,
their teeth like the pearls of Ormuz, their eyes like the eyes of
gazelles of Hedjaz. Before beholding these damosels, I had never
realized what love was, but at last I knew, I fell violently in love
with them both. Never in my wildest moments had I thought to fall in
love with a daughter of the Franks. Nor had I contemplated an extended
stay in this land, and before my departure from Arabia I had begun to
negotiate for the formation of a harem to be in readiness against my
return.

"But I soon began to entertain all these thoughts and to dally with
the idea of changing my religion, abhorrent as that idea was. At first
I had been comforted by the thought that I was in love with both girls
in orthodox Moslem style. But reflecting that I could never have both,
that they would never come to me, that I must go to them, becoming
renegade to my creed, I tried to decide which I loved best. I came to
a decision without any extended thinking. I was in love with Miss
Mildred, the elder of the two sisters Decatur, daughters of one of
Chicago's wealthy men, and this question settled, there remained the
stupendous difficulty of winning her. For I did not even possess the
right to lift my hat to these young ladies. My affair certainly
appeared quite hopeless.

"In the last week of August, an Italian and his wife encamped upon the
south shore of the lake with a small menagerie, if a camel, a bear,
and two monkeys can be dignified by so large a title. He was
accustomed to make the rounds of the hotels and cottages on alternate
days, one day mounted on the dromedary and strumming an Oriental lute,
on the others playing a Basque bagpipe while his bear danced, or
proceeding with hand-organ and monkeys. He had been a soldier in the
Italian colony of Massowah on the Red Sea, where he had acquired the
dromedary--which was the most gigantic one I have ever seen--and a
smattering of Arabic. English he had none, his wife serving as his
interpreter in that tongue.

"The sight of the camel was balm to my eyes. Not only was it agreeable
to me to see one of that race of animals so characteristic of my
native land, but here at last was a form of recreation opened to me. I
hired the camel on the days when the Italian was not using him and
went flying about all over the country. Little did I suspect that I
thereby became associated with the Italian in the minds of the public
and that presently they began to believe that I, too, was an Italian
and the real owner of the menagerie, employing Baldissano to manage it
for me while I lived at my ease at the hotel. I was heard conversing
with the Italian, and of course nobody suspected that I was talking to
him in Arabic. It was a tongue unknown to them all and they chose to
consider it Italian. Moreover, one Ashton Hanks, a member of the
Chicago board of trade, at the hotel for the season, had said to the
menagerie, jerking his thumb interrogatively at me, as I was busied in
the background with the camel, 'Italiano? Italiano?' To which
Baldissano replied, 'Si, signor,' meaning 'yes,' thinking of course
that Hanks meant him. 'Boss? Padrone?' said Hanks again, and again the
answer was, 'Si, signor.'

"So here I was, made out to be an Italian and the owner of a miserable
little menagerie which I employed a minion to direct, while myself
posing as a man of substance and elegant leisure. Here I was, already
proven a person of atrocious taste in dress, clearly proclaimed of no
social standing, of unknown and suspicious antecedents, a vulgarian
pretender and interloper. But of course I didn't know this at the
time.

"I was riding past the front of the hotel on the camel one day at a
little before the noon hour, when I beheld her whom I loved overcome
by keen distress and as she was talking rather loudly, I could not but
be privy to what she said.

"'Oh, dear,' she exclaimed, clasping her hands in great worriment,
'what shall I do, what shall I do! Here I am, invited to go on a sail
and fish-fry on Mr. Gannett's yacht, and I have no white yachting
shoes to wear with my white yachting dress. I've just got to wear that
dress, for I brought only two yachting dresses and the blue one is at
the laundry. I thought I put a pair of white shoes in my trunk, but I
didn't; I haven't time to send to Ripon for a pair. I won't wear black
shoes with that dress. But how will I get white ones?'

"'Through my agency,' said I from where I sat on the back of the
camel.

"'Oh,' said she, with a little start at my unexpected intrusion, her
face lighting with a sudden hope, nevertheless. 'Were you going to
Ripon and will you be back before one-thirty? Are you perfectly
willing to do this errand for me?'

"'I am going to Ripon,' I said, 'and nothing will please me more than
to execute any commission you may entrust to me. This good steed will
carry me the six miles and back before it is time to sail. They seldom
sail on the time set, I have observed.'

"She brought me a patent-leather dancing shoe to indicate the desired
size, and away I went, secured the shoes, and turned homeward. While
skirting a large hill that arises athwart the sky to the westward of
the city of Ripon, I was startled by a weird, portentous, moaning cry
from my mount. Ah, its import was only too well known to me. Full many
a time had I heard it in the desert. It was the cry by which the
camels give warning of the coming of a storm. While yet the eye and
ear of man can detect no signs whatever of the impending outburst of
nature's forces and the earth is bathed in the smiles of the sky, the
camels, by some subtle, unerring instinct, prognosticate the storm.

"I looked over the whole firmament. Not a cloud in sight. A soft
zephyr and a mellow sun glowing genially through a slight autumnal
haze. Not a sign of a storm, but the camel had spoken. I dismounted at
once. I undid the package of shoes. From my pocket I took a small
square bit of stone of the cubical contents of a small pea. It was cut
from the side of the cave where Mohammed rested during the Hegira, or
flight of Mohammed, with which date we begin our calendar. This bit of
stone was reputed to be an efficacious amulet against dangers of
storms, and also a charm against suddenly falling in love. I placed it
in the toe of the right shoe. Unbeknownst to her, Mildred would be
protected against these dangers. I could not hope to dissuade her from
the voyage by telling her of the camel's forewarning. Ashton Hanks was
to be one of the yachting party and he had shown evidences of a tender
regard for her. Retying the package, it was not long before I had
placed it in the hands of Mildred. With a most winsome smile she
thanked me and ran in to don the new purchases.

"The boat set sail and I watched it glide westward over the sparkling
waves, toward the lower end of the lake, watching for an hour until it
had slipped behind some point and was lost to sight. Then I scanned
the heavens to see if the storm I knew must come would break before it
was time for the yachting party to return. Low on the northern horizon
clouds were mustering, their heads barely discernible above the rim of
the world. But for the camel's warning I would not have seen them. The
storm was surely coming. By six o'clock, or thereabouts, it would
burst. The party was to have its fish-fry at six, at some point on the
south shore. On the south shore would be the wreck, if wreck there was
to be.

"With no definite plan, no definite purpose, save to be near my love
in the threatening peril, I set out for the south shore. By water, it
is from a mile and a half to three miles across Green Lake. By land,
it is many times farther. From road to road of those parallel with the
major axis of the lake, it is four miles at the narrowest, and it is
three miles from the end of the lake before you reach the first north
and south road connecting the parallels. Ten miles, then, after you
leave the end of the lake on the side where the hotels are, before you
are at the end on the other side. And then thirteen miles of shore.

"So what with the distance and the time I had spent watching the
shallop that contained my love pass from my field of vision the
afternoon had far waned when I had reached the opposite shore, and
when I had descended to the beach at a point where I had thought I
might command the most extensive view and discover the yacht, if it
had begun to make its way homeward, the light of day had given place
to twilight. But not the twilight of imminent night, the twilight of
the coming tempest. For the brewing of a fearful storm had now some
time been apparent. A hush lay on the land. A candle flame would have
shot straight upward. Nature waited, silently cowering.

"To the northward advanced, in serried columns of black, the beetling
clouds that were turning the day into night, the distant booming of
aërial artillery thundering forth the preluding cannonade of the
charge. Higher and higher into the firmament shot the front of the
advancing ranks in twisting curls of inky smoke, yet all the while the
mass dropped nearer and nearer to the earth and the light of day
departed, save where low down in the west a band of pale gold lay
against the horizon, color and nothing more, as unglowing as a yellow
streak in a painted sunset. Against this weird, cold light, I saw a
naked mast, and then a sail went creaking up and I heard voices. They
had been shortening sail. By some unspent impulse of the vanished
wind, or the impact of the waves still rolling heavily and glassily
from a recent blow, the yacht was still progressing and came moving
past me fifty or sixty feet from shore.

"I heard the voices of women expressing terror, begging the men to do
something. Danger that comes in the dark is far more fearsome than
danger which comes in the light. I heard the men explaining the
impossibility of getting ashore. For two miles on this coast, a line
of low, but unscalable cliffs rose sheer from the water's edge,
overhanging it, in fact, for the waves had eaten several feet into the
base of the cliffs. To get out and stand in front of these cliffs was
to court death. The waves of the coming storm would either beat a man
to death against the rocks, or drown him, for the water was four feet
deep at the edge of the cliffs and the waves would wash over his head.
For two miles, I have said, there was a line of cliffs on this coast,
for two miles save just where I stood, the only break, a narrow rift
which, coinciding with a section line, was the end of a road coming
down to the water. They could not see this rift in the dusk, perhaps
were ignorant of its existence and so not looking for it.

"The voices I had heard were all unfamiliar and it was not until the
yacht had drifted past me that I was apprised it was indeed the craft
I sought by hearing the voice of Mildred saying, with an assumed
jocularity that could not hide the note of fear:

"'What will _I_ do? All the other girls have a man to save them. I am
the extra girl.'

"I drove my long-legged steed into the water after the boat none too
soon, for the whistling of a premonitory gust filled the air. Quickly
through the water strode the camel, and, with his lariat in my hand, I
plumped down upon the stern overhang just as the mainsail went
slatting back and forth across the boat and everybody was ducking his
head. In the confusion, nobody observed my arrival.

"'She's coming about,' cried the voice of the skipper, Gannett. 'A few
of these gusts would get us far enough across to be out of danger from
the main storm.'

"But she did not come about. I could feel the camel tugging at the
lariat as the swerving of the boat jerked him along, but presently the
strain ceased, for the boat lay wallowing as before. Again a fitful
gust, again the slatting of the sail, the skipper put his helm down
hard, the boat put her nose into the wind, hung there, and fell back.

"'She won't mind her helm!'

"'She won't come about!'

"'She acts as if she were towing something, were tied to something!'

"'What's that big rock behind there? Who the devil is this? And how
the devil did he get here?'

"In the midst of these excited and alarmed exclamations came the
solemn, portentous voice of the camel tolling out in the unnatural
night the tocsin of the approaching hurricane.

"'It's the Dago!' cried Gannett, examining me by the fleeting flash of
a match. 'It's his damned camel towing behind that won't let us come
about. Pitch him overboard!'

"'Oh, save me!' appealed Mildred.

"There she had been, sitting just in front of me and I hadn't known it
was she. It was not strange that she had faith that I who had arrived
could also depart.

"'Selim,' I called, pulling the camel to the boat. I had never had a
name for him before, but it was high time he had one, so now I named
him. 'Selim,' and there the faithful beast was and with Mildred in my
arms, I scrambled on to his back and urged him toward the rift in the
wall of cliff.

"As if I had spurned it with my foot, the boat sprang away behind us,
a sudden rushing blast filling her sails and laying her almost over,
and then she was out of our sight, into the teeth of the tempest,
yelling, screaming, howling with a hundred voices as it darted from
the sky and laid flat the waves and then hurled them up in a mass of
stinging spray.

"In fond anticipation, I had dwelt upon the homeward ride with
Mildred. A-camelback, I was, as it were, upon my native heath, master
of myself, assured, and at ease. I had planned to tell her of my love,
plead my cause with Oriental fervor and imagery, but before we reached
shore the tempest was so loud that she could not have heard me unless
I had shouted, and I had no mind to bawl my love. Worse still, when
once we were going across the wind and later into it, I could not open
my mouth at all. We reached the hotel and on its lee side I lifted her
down to the topmost of the piazza steps. I determined not be delayed
longer. If ever there was to be a propitious occasion, it was now when
I had rescued her from encompassing peril. I retained hold of her
hand. She gave me a glance in which was at least gratitude, and I
dared hope, something more, and I was about to make my declaration,
when she made a little step, her right foot almost sunk under her and
she gave an agonized cry and hobbling, limping, hopping on one foot,
passed from me across the piazza to the stairs leading to the second
story, whither she ascended upon her hands and knees.

"That wretched stone from the cavern where Mahommed slept in the
Hegira! How many times during the day had she wanted to take her shoe
off? She would ascertain the cause of her torment, she would lay it to
me. It had indeed been an amulet against sudden love. I was the man
whose love it had forefended.

"'Gannett's yacht went down and all aboard of her were drowned,' said
one of the bellboys to me. 'Everybody in the hotel is feeling
dreadful.'

"'How do you know they are drowned?'

"'Everybody in the hotel says so. I don't know how they found out.'

"'What's that at the pier?' said I.

"The lights at the end of the pier shone against a white expanse of
sail and there was a yacht slowly making a landing.

"Someone came and stood for a moment in an open window above me and
there floated out the voice of one of the sisters Decatur, but which
one, I could not tell. Their voices were much alike and I had not
heard either of them speak very often.

"'Do you think that one ought to marry a person who rescues her from
death, when he happens to be a Dago and cheap circus man into the
bargain? I certainly do not.'

"Which one was it? Which one was it? Imagine my feelings, torn with
doubt, perplexity, and sorrow. Was it Mildred, replying scornfully to
some opinion of her sister, or was it the sister taking Mildred to
task for saying she wished or ought to marry me? How was I to know?
Could I run the risk of asking the girls themselves?"

The emir paused, and it was plain to be seen from the workings of his
countenance that once more he was living over this unhappy episode.

"I can well imagine your feelings and sympathize with them," said Mr.
Middleton. "There you sat in the encircling darkness, asking yourself
with no hope of an answer, 'Was it Mildred? Was it her sister? Was it
Mildred contemptuously repudiating the idea of marriage with me, or
the sister haughtily scoffing at some sentiments just professed by
Mildred? But I should not have spent too long a time asking how I was
to know. I should put the matter to the test and had it out with
Mildred, Miss Mildred, I should say."

The emir looked steadily at Mr. Middleton. There was surprise,
annoyance, perhaps even vexation in his gaze. With incisive tones, he
said:

"How could you so mistake me? Ours is a line whose lineage goes back
twelve hundred years, a noble and unsullied line. Could I, sir, think
of making my wife, making a princess of my race, a woman who could
entertain the thought of stooping to marry a Dago cheap circus man?
Suppose I had gone to Mildred and had asked her if she had expressed
herself of such a demeaning declaration? Suppose she had said, 'Yes,'
then there I would have been, compromised, caught in an entanglement
from which as a man of honor, I could not withdraw. The only thing to
do was to keep silence. The risk was too great, I resolved to leave on
the morrow. For the first time did I learn that I was believed to be a
Dago and the proprietor of the little menagerie. This strengthened my
resolve to leave.

"I left. Your happy encounter with the young ladies in the restaurant
changed all. They learned from you that I was their social equal. They
looked me up and apologized for their apparent lack of appreciation of
my services and explained that they thought me a Dago circus man. I
learned that neither of them believed in a mesalliance, that the
question I had heard was a rhetorical question merely, one not
expecting an answer, much used by orators to express a strong negation
of the sentiments apparently contained in the question. But I have not
yet learned which girl it was who asked the question. It is entirely
immaterial and I don't think I shall try to find out, even after I am
married, for of course you have surmised I am to be married, to be
married to Mildred."

"Yes, another American heiress marries a foreign nobleman," said Mr.
Middleton, with a bitterness that did not escape the emir.

"Permit me to correct a popular fallacy," said the emir. "Nothing
could be more erroneous than the prevalent idea that American girls
marry foreign noblemen because attracted by the glitter of rank,
holding their own plain republican citizens in despite. Sir, it takes
a title to make a foreigner equal to American men in the eyes of
American women. A British knight may compete with the American mister,
but when you cross the channel, nothing less than a count will do in a
Frenchman, a baron in the line of a German, while, for a Russian to
receive any consideration, he must be a prince.

"And now," said the emir, "my little establishment here being about to
be broken up, I am going to ask you to accept certain of my effects
which for sundry reasons I cannot take with me to my new abode. My
jewels, hangings, and costumes, my wife will like, of course. But as
she is opposed to smoking, there are six narghilehs and four
chibouques which I will never use again. As I am about to unite with
the Presbyterian church this coming Sunday, it might cause my wife
some disquietude and fear of backsliding, were I to retain possession
of my eight copies of the Koran. She may be wise there," said the emir
with a sigh. "If perchance you should embrace the true faith and
thereby make compensation for the loss of a member occasioned by my
withdrawal----"

"That would not even matters up," interrupted Mr. Middleton, "for I am
not a Presbyterian, but a Methodist."

"Oh," said the emir. "Well, there are five small whips of rhinoceros
hide and two gags. My wife will not wish me to keep those, nor a
crystal casket containing twenty-seven varieties of poisons. Then
there are other things that you might have use for and I have not. I
have sent for a cab and Mesrour will stow the things in it."

At that moment the cab was heard without and Mesrour began to load it
with the gifts of the emir. At length he ceased his carrying and stood
looking expectantly. With an air of embarrassment, and clearing his
throat hesitatingly, the emir addressed Mr. Middleton.

"There is one last thing I am going to ask you to take. I cannot call
it a gift. I can look upon your acceptance of it in no other light
than a very great service. Some time ago, when marriage in this
country was something too remote to be even dreamed of, I sent home
for an odalisque."

The emir paused and looked obliquely at Mr. Middleton, as if to
observe the effect of this announcement. That excellent young man had
not the faintest idea what an odalisque might be, but he had ever made
it a point when strange and unknown terms came up, to wait for
subsequent conversation to enlighten him directly or by inference as
to their meaning. In this way he saved the trouble of asking questions
and, avoiding the reputation of being inquisitive and curious, gained
that of being well informed upon and conversant with a wide range of
subjects. So he looked understandingly at the emir and remarking
approvingly, "good eye," the emir continued, much encouraged.

"To a lonely man such as I then was, the thought of having an
odalisque about, was very comforting. Lonely as I then was, an
odalisque would have afforded a great deal of company."

"That's right," said Mr. Middleton. "Why, even cats are company. The
summer I was eighteen, everybody in our family went out to my
grandfather's in Massachusetts, and I stayed home and took care of the
house. I tell you, I'd been pretty lonely if it hadn't been for our
two cats."

"But now I am going to be married and my wife would not think of
tolerating an odalisque about the house. She simply would not have it.
The odalisque arrived last night, and I am in a great quandary. I
could not think of turning the poor creature out perhaps to starve."

"That's right," said Mr. Middleton. "Some persons desiring to dispose
of a cat, will carry it off somewhere and drop it, thinking that more
humane than drowning it. But I say, always drown a cat, if you wish to
get rid of it."

"Now I have thought that you, being without a wife to object, might
take this burden off my hands. I will hand you a sum sufficient for
maintenance during a considerable period and doubtless you can, as
time goes on, find someone else who wants an odalisque, or discover
some other way of disposal, in case you tire----"

"Send her along," said Mr. Middleton, cordially and heartily. "If
worst comes to worst, there's an old fellow I know who sells parrots
and cockatoos and marmosets, and perhaps he'd like an odalisque."

"I will send her," said the emir.

"So it's a she," quoth Mr. Middleton to himself. He had used the
feminine in the broad way that it is applied indefinitely to ships,
railways trains, political parties etc., etc., with no thought of
fitting a fact.

"I will give you fifteen hundred dollars for her maintenance. Having
brought her so far, I feel a responsibility----"

"But that is such a large sum. I really wouldn't need so much----"

"That is none too large," rejoined the emir. "I wish her to be treated
well and I believe you will do it. At first, she will not understand
anything you say to her, of course, but she will soon learn what you
mean. The tone, as much as the words, enlightens, and I think you will
have very little trouble in managing her."

"Is there a cage?" hazarded Mr. Middleton, "or won't I need one?"

"Lock her in a room, if you are afraid she will run away, though such
a fear is groundless. Or if you wish to punish her, the rhinoceros
whips would do better than a cage. A cage is so large and I could
never see any advantage in it. But you will probably never have
occasion to use even a whip. You will have but this one odalisque. Had
you two or three, they might get to quarreling among themselves and
you might have use for a whip. But toward you, she will be all
gentleness, all submission."

Mr. Middleton and the emir then turned to the counting and accounting
of the fifteen hundred dollars, and so occupied, the lawyer missed
seeing Mesrour pass with the odalisque and did not know she had been
put in the hack until the emir had so apprised him.

"She is in a big coffee sack," said the emir. "The meshes of the
fabric are sufficiently open to afford her ample facility for
breathing, and yet she can't get out. Then, too, it will simplify
matters when you get to your lodgings. You will not have to lead her
and urge her, frightened and bewildered by so much moving about, but
pack her upon your back in the bag and carry her to your room with
little trouble.

"And now," continued the emir, grasping Mr. Middleton's hands warmly,
"for the last time do I give you God-speed from this door. I will not
disguise my belief that our intimacy has in a measure come to an end.
As a married man, I shall not be so free as I have been. I am no
longer in need of seeking out knowledge of strange adventures. The
tyrannical imam of Oman, who imprisoned my brother, is dead, and his
successor, commiserating the poor youth's sorrows, has not only
liberated him, but given him the vermillion edifice of his
incarceration. This my brother intends to transmute into gold, for he
has hit upon the happy expedient of grinding it up into a face powder,
a rouge, beautiful in tint and harmless in composition, for the rock
was quarried in one of the most salubrious locations upon the upper
waters of the great river Euphrates. I trust I shall sometimes see you
at our place, where I am sure I shall be joined in welcoming you by
Mrs.--Mrs.--well, to tell the truth," said the emir in some slight
confusion, "I don't know what her name will be, for it is obviously
out of the question to call her Mrs. Achmed Ben Daoud, and she objects
to the tribal designation of Alyam, which I had temporarily adopted
for convenience's sake, as ineuphonious."

"Sir, friend and benefactor, guiding lamp of my life, instructor of my
youth and moral exemplar," said Mr. Middleton, in the emotion of the
moment allowing his speech an Oriental warmth which the cold
self-consciousness of the Puritan would have forbade, had he been
addressing a fellow American, "I cannot tell you the advantages that
have flowed from my acquaintance with you. It was indeed the turning
point of my life. The pleasure I will leave untouched upon, as I must
alike on the present occasion, the profits. Let me briefly state that
they foot up to $3760. A full accounting of how they accrued, would
consume the rest of the night, and so it must be good-bye."

As Mr. Middleton looked back for the last time upon that hospitable
doorway, he saw the gigantic figure of Mesrour silhouetted against the
dim glow beyond and there solemnly boomed on the night air, the Arabic
salutation, "Salaam aleikoom."

_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Eighth and Last Gift of the
Emir._

Getting into the hack and settling into the sole remaining vacant
space Mesrour had left in loading the vehicle with the emir's gifts,
Mr. Middleton was so preoccupied by a gloomy dejection as he reflected
that a most agreeable, not to say inspiring and educating, intimacy
was at last ended, that he reached his lodgings and had begun to
unload his new possessions, before he thought of the odalisque. There
lay the coffee sack lengthwise on the front seat and partially
reclining against the side of the carriage. He was greatly surprised
at the size of the unknown creature and began to surmise that it was
an anthropoid ape, though before his speculations had ranged from
parrots through dogs to domesticated leopards. Leaving the coffee sack
until the last, he gingerly seized the slack of the top of the bag and
proceeded to pull it upon his shoulders, taking care to avoid holding
the creature where it could kick or struggle effectually, for despite
all the emir had told him of the gentleness of the odalisque, he was
resolved to take no chances. Whatever the creature was, she had slid
down, forming a limp lump at the end of the bag, when he charily
deposited it on the floor and turned to consult his dictionary before
untying it. He was going to know what the creature was before he dealt
with her further, a creature so large as that.

_Odalisque._ A slave or concubine in a Mohammedan harem!!

A woman!!!

Mr. Middleton tore at the string by which the bag was tied, full of
the keenest self-reproach. The uncomfortable position during the long
ride, the worse position in which she now lay. The knots refused to
budge and snatching a knife, with a mighty slashing, he ripped the bag
all away and disclosed the slender form of a woman crouched, huddled,
collapsed, face downward, head upon her knees. Turning her over and
supporting her against his breast in a sitting posture, Mr. Middleton
looked upon the most loveliness, unhappiness, and helplessness he had
ever beheld.

For a moment his heart almost stopped as he looked into the still
face, but he saw the bosom faintly flutter, slow tears oozed out from
under the long lashes of the closed lids, and the cupid's bow mouth
gave little twitches of misery and hopelessness. With what exquisite
emotions was he filled as he looked down upon the head pillowed upon
his breast, with what sentiments of anger, with what noble chivalry!

A Moslem woman. A Moslem woman, who even in the best estate of her sex
as free and a wife, goes to her grave like a dog, with no hope of a
life beyond, unless her husband amid the joys of Paradise should turn
his thoughts back to earth and wish for her there among his houris.
But this poor sweet flower had not even this faint expectation, for
she was no wife nor could be, slave of a Mohammedan harem. No rights
in this world nor the next. Not even the attenuated rights which law
and custom gave the free woman. No sustaining dream of a divine
recompense for the unmerited unhappiness of this existence. A slave, a
harem slave, wanted only when she smiled, was gay, and beautiful; who
must weep alone and in silence, in silence, with never a sympathetic
shoulder to weep upon after they sold her from her mother's side. Tied
in a bag, going she knew not whither, thrown in a carriage like so
much carrion, in these indignities she only wept in silence, for her
lord, the man, must not be discomposed. Like the timorous, helpless
wild things of the woods whose joys and sorrows must ever be voiceless
lest the bloody tyrants of their domain come, who even in the crunch
of death hold silence in their weak struggles, this poor young thing
bore her sufferings mutely, for her lord, the man, must not be
discomposed, choking her very breath lest a sob escape. Mr. Middleton,
in a certain illuminating instinct which belongs to women but only
occasionally comes to some men, saw all this in a flash without any
pondering and turning over and reflecting and comparing, and he said
to himself under his breath, not eloquently, but well, as there came
home to him the heinousness of that abhorrant social system dependent
upon the religious system of the Prophet of Mecca, "Damn the emir and
Mohammed and the whole damned Mohammedan business, kit and boodle!"

In this imprecation there was a piece of grave injustice which Mr.
Middleton would not have allowed himself in calmer mood, for the emir
was about to become a member of one of the largest and most
fashionable Presbyterian congregations in the city and ought not to
have been included in an anathema of Moslemry and condemned for
anything he upheld while in the benighted condition of Mohammedanism.

Mr. Middleton continuing to gaze, as who could not, upon that
beautiful unhappy face, suddenly he imprinted upon the quivering lips
a kiss in which was the tender sympathy of a mother, the heartening
encouragement of a friend, and the ardent passion of a lover. The
odalisque opened her lovely hazel eyes and _seeing_ corroboration of
all the _touch_ of the kiss had told her, as she looked into eyes that
brimmed with tears like hers, upon lips that quivered like hers, she
let loose the flood gates of her woes in a torrent of sobs and tears,
and throwing herself upon his shoulders, poured out her long pent
sorrows in a good cry.

It was only a summer shower and the sun soon shone. She did not weep
long. Too filled with wonder and surpassing delight was this daughter
of the Orient in her first experience with the chivalry of the
Occident. She must needs look again at this man whose eyes had welled
full in compassion for her. She would court again his light and
soothing caresses, his gentle ministrations, so different from the
brutal pawing of the male animals of her own race, the moiety with
souls. Ah, how poignantly sweet, how amazing, that which to her
American sisters was the usual, the commonplace, the everyday!

She raised her head. Her tears no longer flowed, but her lips still
quivered, in a pleading little smile; and her bosom still fluttered,
in a shy and doubting joy, and in her mind floated a half-formed
prayer that the genii whose craft had woven this rapturous dream,
would not too soon dispel it.

Mr. Middleton gazed at her. He had never seen a face like that, so
perfectly oval; never such vermillion as showed under the dusk of her
cheeks and stained the lips, narrow, but full. What wondrous eyes were
those, so large and lustrous, illumining features whose basal lines of
classic regularity were softly tempered into a fluent contour. A
circlet of gold coins bound her brow, shining in bright relief against
the luxuriant masses of chestnut hair. A delicate and slender figure
had she, yet well cushioned with flesh and no bones stood out in her
bare neck.

Moved not by his own discomfort on the hard floor, but by the possible
discomfort of the odalisque, Mr. Middleton at length raised her and
conducted her to a red plush sofa obtained by the landlady for soap
wrappers and a sum of money, which having turned green in places and
therefore become no longer suitable for a station in the parlor, had
been placed in this room a few days before. Upon this imposing article
of furniture the two sat down, and though at first Mr. Middleton did
no more than place his arm gently and reassuringly about the girl's
waist and hold her hand lightly, in the natural evolution,
progression, and sequence of events, following the rules of contiguity
and approach--rhetorical rules, but not so here--before long the cheek
of the fair Arab lay against that of the son of Wisconsin and her arm
was about his neck and every little while she uttered a little sigh of
complete, of unalloyed content. What had been yesterday, what might be
to-morrow, she was now happy. As for Mr. Middleton, what a stream of
delicious thoughts, delicious for the most part because of their
unselfishness and warm generosity, flowed through his head. What a joy
it would be to make happy the path of this girl who had been so
unhappy, to lay devotion at the feet of her who had never dreamed
there was such a thing in the world, to bind himself the slave of her
who had been a slave.

Then, too, he luxuriated in the simple, elementary joy of possession
and the less elementary joy of possession of new things, whether new
hats, new clothes, new books, new horses, new houses, or new girls,
and which is the cause why so many of us have new girls and new beaux.
And when he looked ahead and saw only one logical termination of the
episode, he swelled with a pride that was honest and unselfish, as he
thought how all would look and admire as he passed with this lovely
woman, his wife.

He could have sat thus the whole night through, but the girl must be
tired, worn by the sufferings of this day and many before. He motioned
toward the bed and indicated by pantomime that she should go to it.
She would have descended to her knees and with her damask lips brushed
the dust from his shoes, if she had thought he wished it, but she knew
not what he meant by his gesturing and sat bewildered in eager and
anxious willingness. So arranging the bed for her occupancy, he took
her in his arms and bore her to it and dropped her in. The riotous
blushes chased each other across her cheeks as she lay there with eyes
closed, so sweet, so helpless, so alone.

For a little season he stood there gazing, gloating, enravished, like
to hug himself in the keen titillation of his ecstasy and this was not
all because this lovely being was his, but because he was hers.

Glancing about the room preliminarily to leaving, and wondering what
further was to be done for the girl's comfort and peace of mind, he
bethought him of an ancient tale he had once read. In this narration,
fate having made it unavoidable that a noble lord should pass the
night in a castle tower with a fair dame of high degree and there
being but one bed in the apartment, he had placed a naked sword in the
middle of the bed between them and so they passed the night, guarded
and menaced by the falchion, for the nonce become the symbol of bright
honor and cold virtue. Mr. Middleton had often wondered why the knight
did not sleep on the floor, or outside the door, as he himself now
intended doing. But it occurred to him that some such symbol might
reassure the Arab damosel and having no sword, he drew one of the
large pistols the emir had given him and approached the bed to lay it
there.

The girl's eyes had now opened and Mr. Middleton started as he beheld
her face. Once more the hunted, helpless look it had worn when first
he had looked on it. But more. Such an utter fear and sickening unto
death. But not fear, terror for herself. Fear for the death of an
ideal, a fear caused by her misinterpretation of his intent with the
pistol. It had not been real, it had not been real. He was as other
men, the men of her world and all the world was alike and life not
worth living. With a finesse he had not suspected he possessed, he
laid the pistol on a pile of legal papers on a table at the bed's
head, a pile whose sheets a suddenly entering breeze was whirling
about the room. How obvious it was he had brought the pistol for a
paper weight. Once more the girl was smiling as he drew the clothes
over her, all dressed as she was, and kissing shut her drowsy eyes, he
left her in her virginal couch.

On the mat before the door in the hallway without, he disposed himself
as comfortably as he could. With due regard for the romantic
proprieties, he tried to keep within the bounds of the mat. But it was
too short, his curled up position too uncomfortable, and so he
overflowed it and could scarcely be said to be sleeping on the mat. It
was too late to arouse the landlady and although he was there by
choice, it could not have been otherwise.

After snatches of broken sleep, after dreams waking and dreams
sleeping, which were all alike and of one thing and indistinguishable,
he was at length fully awake at a little before six and aware of an
odor of tobacco smoke. Applying his nose to the crack of the door, he
finally became convinced that it came from his room. Wondering what it
could possibly mean, and accordingly opening the door, opening it so
slowly and gradually that the odalisque could have ample time to seek
the cover of the bed clothes, he stepped in.

There sat the odalisque on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, puffing
away at his big meerschaum, blowing clouds that filled the room. On
the table lay an empty cigarette box that had been full the night
before. This had not belonged to Mr. Middleton, who was not a
cigarette smoker and despised the practice, but had been forgotten by
Chauncy Stackelberg on a recent visit. The fingers of her right hand
were stained yellow, not by the cigarettes of that one box, but the
unnumbered cigarettes of years. Mr. Middleton had not noticed these
fingers the night before, but had been absorbed by her face, and this
as beautiful, as piquant, as bewitching as before, looked up at him,
the lips puckered, waiting, longing.

He stood there, stock-still, stern, troubled, dismayed.

She moved over, where she sat on the edge of the bed, with mute
invitation, and Mr. Middleton continuing to stand and stare, she moved
again and yet again, until she was against the headboard. And still he
did not sit beside her, thinking all the time of the young lady of
Englewood whose pure Puritan lips never had been and never could be
defiled by cigarettes and tobacco. The young lady of Englewood, the
young lady of Englewood, what a jewel of women was she and what a fool
he had been and how unkind and inconsiderate! Recalled by a little
snuffle from the odalisque, he saw the puckered lips were relaxing
sorrowfully and fearing the girl would cry, he hastily sat down beside
her and put his right arm about her. But he did not take the shapely
hand that now laid down the meerschaum, and though her head fell on
his shoulder and her breath came and went with his, he did not kiss
her, for that breath was laden with tobacco. Nor did his fingers stray
through those masses of silken hair, for he was sure they were full of
the fumes of tobacco. There with his arm about the soft, uncorsetted
form of that glorious beauty, her own white forearm smooth and cool
about his neck, he was thinking of the young lady of Englewood.

Poor odalisque! Why cannot he speak to you and tell you? You would
wash away those yellow stains with your own blood, if you thought he
wished it. Forego tobacco? Why, you would cease to inhale the breath
of life itself, for his sake.

Out of the grave came all the dead Puritan ancestors of Mr. Middleton,
a long procession back to Massachusetts Bay. The elders of Salem who
had ordained that a man should not smoke within five miles of a house,
the lawgivers who had prescribed the small number, brief length, and
sad color of ribbons a woman might wear and who forbade a man to kiss
his wife on Sunday, all these righteous and uncomfortable folk stirred
in Mr. Middleton's blood and obsessed him.

Fatima, Nouronhor, or whatever your name might be, my fair Moslem, why
did fate throw you in with a Puritan? Yet I wot that had it been one
from a strain of later importation from Europe, you had not been so
safe there last night. The Puritans may be disagreeable, but they are
safe, safe.

Part of this Mr. Middleton was saying over and over to himself--the
latter part. The Puritans are safe. The young lady of Englewood was
safe. She was good, she was beautiful, too, in her calm, sweet,
Puritan way. He must see her at once, he would go---- A sigh, not
altogether of content, absolute and complete, recalled to him the
woman pressed against his side. She must be taken care of, disposed
of. Asylum? No. Factory? No, no. Theater, museum? No, no, no. He would
find some man to marry her. There must be someone, lots of men, in
fact, who would marry a girl so lovely, who needn't find out she
smoked until after marriage, or who would not care anyway. All this
might take time. He would be as expeditious as possible, however. He
called Mrs. Leschinger, the landlady, and entrusting the girl to her
care, departed to visit a matrimonial agency he knew of.

He looked over the list of eligibles. He read their misspelled,
crabbedly written letters. There was not one in the lot to whom a man
of conscience could entrust the Moslem flower, even if she did smoke.

"There is apparently not one man of education or refinement in the
whole lot," exclaimed Mr. Middleton.

"That's about right," said the president of the agency. "Between you
and I, there ain't many people of refinement who would go at marrying
in that way. You don't know what a lot of jays and rubes I have to
deal with. Often I threaten to retire. But occasionally a real
gentleman or lady does register in our agency. Object, fun or
matrimony. Now I have one client that is all right, all right except
in one particular. He is a man of thirty-five or six, fine looking,
has a nice house and five thousand dollars a year clear and sure. But
he's stone deaf. He wants a young and handsome girl. Now I could get
him fifty dozen homely young women, or pretty ones that weren't
chickens any longer, real pretty and refined, but you see a real
handsome young girl sort of figures her chances of marrying are good,
that she may catch a man who can hear worth as much as this Crayburn,
which ain't a whole lot, or that if she does marry a poor young chap,
he'll have as much as Crayburn does when he is as old as Crayburn. Now
I'm so sure you'll only have your trouble for your pains, that I won't
charge you anything for his address and a letter of introduction. I
don't believe you have got a girl who will suit, for if you have, she
won't take Crayburn. Here's his picture."

Mr. Middleton looked upon the photograph of a man who seemed to be
possessed of some of the best qualities of manhood. It was true that
there was a slight suspicion of weakness in the face, but above all it
was kindly and sympathetic.

"A good looking man," said Mr. Middleton.

"Smart man, too," said the matrimonial agent. "He graduated from the
university in Evanston and was a lawyer and a good one, until a friend
fired off one of those big duck guns in his ear for a joke."

Taking the odalisque with him in a cab, Mr. Middleton was off for the
residence of Mr. Crayburn.

"Will she have me?" asked Mr. Crayburn, when he had read Mr.
Middleton's hastily penciled account of the main facts of his
connection with the fair Moslem, wherein for brevity's sake he had
omitted any mention of the fifteen hundred dollars the emir had given
him for assuming charge of her.

"Of course," wrote Mr. Middleton.

"I never saw a more beautiful woman," exclaimed Mr. Crayburn. "By the
way, have you noticed any predilections, habits, wants, it would be
well for me to know about?"

"She smokes," wrote Mr. Middleton, not knowing why he wrote it, and
wishing like the devil that he hadn't the moment he had.

"All Oriental women smoke. I will ask her not to as soon as she learns
English."

Mr. Middleton was amazed to think that such a simple solution had not
occurred to him. But he was glad it was so, for he had not been
unscathed by Cupid's darts there last night and he might not now be
about to visit the young lady of Englewood.

"Your fee," said Mr. Crayburn.

Mr. Middleton had not thought of this. He looked about at the
handsomely furnished room. He thought of the five thousand dollars a
year and the very much smaller income he could offer the young lady of
Englewood. He thought of these things and other things. He thought of
the young lady of Englewood; of the odalisque, toward whom he occupied
the position of what is known in law as next friend. She sat behind
him, out of his sight, but he saw her, saw her as he saw her for the
first time, when, ripping the bag away, she lay there in her piteous,
appealing helplessness.

"There is no fee. The maiden even has a dowry of fifteen hundred
dollars. Please invest it in her name. Oh, sir, treat her kindly."

"Treat her kindly!" exclaimed the deaf man with emotion. "He would be
a hound who could ill treat one so helpless and friendless, a stranger
in a strange land, whose very beauty would be her undoing, were she
without a protector."

Much relieved, Mr. Middleton prepared to depart and the odalisque saw
she was not to be included in his departure. She noted the luxurious
appointments of the house, so different from the threadbare and seedy
furnishings of Mr. Middleton's one lone room, but rather a thousand
times would she have been there. A tumult of yearning and love filled
her heart, but beyond the slow tears in her eyes and the trembling
lips, no one could have guessed it. Once more she was a Moslem slave,
sold by the man whom last night she had thought----She bowed to kismet
and strangled her feelings as she had so many times before. And so
after a shake of the hand, Mr. Middleton left her, left her to learn
as the idol of Mr. Crayburn's life, with every whim gratified, that
the first American she had known was but one of millions.

Away toward Englewood hastened Mr. Middleton, reasoning with himself
in a somewhat casuistical manner. His conscience smote him as he
thought of the previous night. But what else could anybody have done?
Deprived of the power of communicating by the means of words, he had
by caresses assuaged her grief and stilled her fears and now it was
too plain he had made her love him and he had left her in desolation.
But heigho! what was the use of repining over spilled milk and
nicotined fingers that another man and good would care for, and he
himself had not been unscathed by Cupid's darts there the night
before.

The young lady of Englewood was just putting on her hat to go out and
was standing before the mirror in the hallway. Mr. Middleton had never
called at that hour of the day. For months he had not called at all
and she never expected that he would again. So without any
apprehension at all, she was wearing one of the green silk shirt
waists she had made from the Turkish trousers he had given her, and
had just got her hat placed to suit her, when there he was!

She turned, blushing furiously. Whether it was the confusion caused
her by being discovered in this shirt waist, or the joy of seeing him
again and the complete surrender, she made in this joy, so delectable
and unexpected and which was not unmixed with a little fear that if he
went away this time, he would never come back again, never! whether it
was these things or what not, she made no struggle at all as Mr.
Middleton threw his arms about her, threw them about her as if she
were to rescue him from some fate, and though he said nothing
intelligible for some time, but kissed her lips, cheeks, and nose,
which latter she had been at pains to powder against the hot sun then
prevailing, she made no resistance at all and breathed an audible
"yes," when he uttered a few incoherent remarks which might be
interpreted as a proposal of marriage.

Here let us leave him, for all else would be anti-climax to this
supreme moment of his life. Here let us leave him where I wish every
deserving bachelor may some day be: in the arms of an honest and
loving woman who is his affianced wife.