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fresh start and think. Would morning never come? He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand it.

He got up and feverishly put on his clothes. Stealing out of his room, he felt his way softly down the dark stairs. After a moment's fumbling at the chain he cautiously opened the front door and slipped outside. In the fresh night air he paused a moment, his hand still on the knob. Suddenly, as if seized by a panic, he slammed the door after him with a bang that must have reverberated through the old house, rushed down the steps and walked and walked and walked. Across town, down town, he knew not where he went. He only knew that he must walk, walk until the things in his head were tired-so tired that they must stop.

After midnight and before dawn, when the night is worn and bedraggled and the day has not yet started to arise, there comes a time when it seems as if some great vampire were hovering over the earth, sucking the vitality out of every living, creature. It is the hour when sick men most often yield to death; when strong men become cowards, and weak men seek to escape their burdens by suicide.

It was at this hour that Mr. Bleeker found himself walking down a wide, deserted avenue. The sound of distant thunder, nearer, nearer, and then a roaring, hammering demon swept by on the elevated structure above his head. A gaunt grey cat, startled from its feast at an overturned garbage can, darted across his path and shot into the inky darkness of a cellarway. Mr. Bleeker shuddered.

At the next corner the street sign on a lamp-post caught his eye. The Bowery! The name suggested visions of climbing roses and the dark, cool shadows cast in bright sunlight. He smiled bitterly at the irony of it and quickened his weakening pace. The piercing shriek of a fire engine's whistle in the distance or was it the death shriek of the banshee?-chilled him to the marrow. Ugh! . .

And there-at the end of the street-what was that awful thing-like some gigantic insect with horrid luminous eyes— all angles-spanning the whole street with its monstrous, sharpjointed legs?

Ah, yes: the bridge entrance—the Brooklyn Bridge! He paused and drew his hand across his forehead. He had once shown the bridge to a man from out of town and knew it perfectly. Yes, it was only the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet how eerie, how uncanny it seemed in the weird, dim light of the dawn, for now the sky was streaked with greys. The terrible vampire of the hour before was slowly rising, drawing up her skirts, her claws dripping with-Mr. Bleeker clenched his fists as if hanging on to something-dripping with the vitality and will power of her victims. Men had jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge and found death in the river below. He remembered wondering at the time

"I will," he muttered, striding forward with fresh determination. "If the lemon seed can never become part of the punch, take it out of the punch and throw it away. I will!"

Absurd and ridiculous? Assuredly; especially in broad daylight. But to poor little Mr. Bleeker, distraught and unbalanced in the depressing grey of dawn, the idea was noble and heroic.

He climbed the bridge steps and strode through the covered approach with the bold, determined step of a drunken man bent upon proving his sobriety. Out on the bridge the fresh morning air struck him sharply. Ahead of him the sky was daubed with broad smears of light, as if Nature, remembering that Brooklyn is farther away from its daily work than Manhattan, found it necessary to awaken it a trifle earlier.

Below the promenade, practically deserted at this hour, was the driveway. Two or three heavy trucks rumbled along. A trolley car scurried by. Far down beneath the driveway rolled the wide river, patient and silent, ready to bear its daily burden of the city's commerce and traffic. Mr. Bleeker was about to seek death in its life. Would he in turn find life in death? He wondered.

and, as if afraid of falling, How did they do it, he won

The height made him dizzy, he veered away from the railing. dered. He would have to drop to the driveway to reach the outer edge; and the drop was too great; he would surely-He

shook the unpleasant thought from him. Perhaps farther on there would be a place.

He passed under the stately gothic arches of the great stone pier. The indefinite daubs of light in the sky ahead of him had now taken form in great streaks of pale gold radiating upward from the silhouetted Brooklyn skyline. Pausing to follow their course, he turned, and looked back toward the city he had left.

He gasped.

Tower upon tower, green and ivory and gold, piling up higher and higher until it seemed they must pierce the heavens themselves! 'Twas like some magic dream city of the Arabian Nights, but with a strength of purpose and a virility never known to Oriental imagination.

Joseph Pennell, with his artist's gift of seeing beauty where beauty is, rather than where beauty ought to be, has seen this unbelievable city, and felt the thrill of it.

And Mr. Bleeker, too, forlorn and soul-hungry on the bridge before dawn, felt the thrill of it.

Even as he stood there, spellbound, a ray of the still invisible sun caught the topmost pinnacle and kindled it into a blaze of golden glory. Slowly, slowly, it descended. Now the next highest tower had caught. Then another. And another. Now the peaks of the whole unbelievable city were bathed in gold. It was as if the hand of God were gently awakening the work of man. And then, suddenly,-in some way Mr. Bleeker knew it without turning,-the sun rose back of Brooklyn.

Mr. Bleeker, with unconscious reverence, took off his hat. "Wonderful!" he murmured.

What a monument to its builder!-to the builders of every brick and stone of it; to the builders of even the dingy little shadow-buried houses in the foreground that gave the noble towers their majestic height, and accentuated their golden glory. It was a monument to the men and women who, by their faithful industry, had made it all possible; to the Wall Street king and the great merchant; yes, and even to the newsboy in the streets and the humble pushcart pedler-for even the meanest of them had done his part; even

Mr. Bleeker suddenly straightened up and drew a deep breath. There was a new light in his eye, and, as he walked slowly toward the wonderful vision before him, a new firmness in his step.

Mr. Bleeker, his eyes bright and strangely youthful in spite of the dark circles under them, was at his customary ledger at the usual hour.

"Good morning, Mr. Bleeker," said the present head of the business. And how are we getting on this morning?' Things "-Mr. Bleeker, slightly confused, stopped short. Then, with almost eagerness: "We're doing splendidly, sir."

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The head of the business, noting the slight variation of the time-honored formula, smiled approvingly. "Good for us!"

he said, with a cheery nod of his head.

66

"M

THE WILL

HEWES LANCASTER

E," Madame François said wistfully, "when I die
I should wish to leave will."

"Will," Madame Moise took up brightly, "but, yes! It would be fine for you to leave will."

Madame Moise was nothing if not eager, and always she was sympathetic. She did not know much about the François, they were new people who had moved to the Bayou only a few years ago, but she knew all about the note that tells of a troubled longing. Having responded warmly to this note in the old Madame's tone, she added honestly:

Well, me! I wish to know what will is, maybe?"

Madame François grew gracious.-Poor little shrivelled Madame that she was, a woman who had had no children, whose opinion was therefore held in such slight regard along the Bayou. How she warmed in the glow of giving knowledge. How she bent her worn old body about, and wove meaning into the air with her thin old fingers that she might give the information nicely!

"Will is paper woman leave when she die. She hide it. Hide it in drawer"

"In drawer," uttered Madame Moise. And because she was keen of wit and could not help seeing things as they were, she had a swift vision of Madame François' house and its furnishings-shelves on the wall, bed in the corner,—not a drawer in either living room or kitchen. How could Madame François leave a paper hidden in a drawer? She hesitated politely: "In drawer, yes. If?"

Madame François' glance grew more gracious, her fingers more vibrant. Ah, it was indeed true that she had had no children! But, had she not read books? Three of them? Not such reading books as children read at school, but books with paper backs and fine print that made her screw up her eyes to read it. Books that Madame Moise with all her wit and

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