Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1916 — The THOUSANDTH WOMAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The THOUSANDTH

WOMAN

by ERNEST W.HORNUNG

Author of ‘□he AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. RAFFLES. Etc. IUUSTRAHONS to; S'

CHAPTER Xl—Continued. The trusty, sisterly, sensible voice, half bantering but altogether kind, genuinely Interested if the least bit inquisitive, too, would have gone to a harder or more hardened heart than beat on Blanche’s balcony that night. Yet as Cazalet lighted his pipe he looked old enough to be her father. “I’ll tell you some time,” he puffed. “It’s only a case of two heads,” said Blanche. "I know you’re bothered, and I should like to help, that’s all.” _“You couldn't.” - "How do you know? I believe you’re going to devote yourself to this poor man—if you can get him off —I mean, when you do.” “Well?” he said. “Surely I. could help you there! Especially if he’s 111,’’ cried Blanche, encouraged by his silence. “I’m not half a bad nurse, really!” “I’m certain you’re not* “Does he look very ill?” <She had been trying to avoid the direct question as far as possible, but this one seemed so harmless. Yet It was recelved ln a stony sllence unlfks any that had gone before. It was as though Cazalet neither moved nor breathed, whereas he had been all sighs and fidgets just before. His pipe wa« nut already—-that was the one merit of bush tobacco, it required constant attention—and he did not look like lighting it again. Until tonight they had not mentioned Scruton since the motoring began. That had been a tacit rule of the road, of wayside talk and Indoor orgy. But Blanche had always assumed that Cazalet had been to see him in the prison; and now he told her that he never had. “I can’t face him," he cried under his breath, “and that’s the truth! Let me get him out of this hole, and I’m his man forever; but until I do, while there’*" a, chance of falling, I simply can’t fade the fellow. It isn’t as if he’d asked to see me. Why should I force myself upon him?’’ “He hasn’t asked to see you because he doesn’t know what you’re doing for him!” Blanche leaned forward as eagerly as she was speaking, all her repressed feelings coming to their own in her for just a moment. “He doesn’t know because I do believe you wouldn’t have him told that you’d arrived, lest he should suspect! You are a brick, Sweep, you really are!" He was too much of one to sit still under the name. He sprang up, beating his hands. "Why shouldn’t I be —

to him —to a poor devil who’s been through all he’s been through? Ten years! Just think of it; no. It’s unthinkable to you or me. And it all started in our office; we were to blame for not keeping our eyes open; things couldn’t have come to such a pass if we’d done our part, my poor old father for one —I can’t help saying it—and I myself for another. Talk about contributory negligence! We were negligent, as well as blind. We didn’t know a villain when we saw one, and we let him make another villain under our noses; and the second one was the only one we could see in his true colors, even then. Do you think we owe him nothing now? Don’t you think I owe him something, as the only man left to pay?” But Blanche made no attempt to answer his passionate questions. He hsd let htmaelf go at last : it relieved her also in a way, for it was the natural man back again on her balcony. But he had set Blanche off thinking on other lines than he intended. "I’m thinking of what he must have “feit he owed Mr. Cravenand—and jhe owned. “I don’t bother niy head brer citing-: of them,” returned Cazalet harshWlifetime, and she was every inch his daughter. Scruton’s the one I pity—because I’ve suffered so much from he did it!”

Blanche was sharp enough to interrupt. ’ “No —no —but if he had!” “You'd still stand by him?" “I’ve told you so before. I meant to take him back tc Australia with me —I never told you that —but I meant to take him, and not a soul out there to know who he was.” He sighed aloud over the tragic stopper on that* plan. “And would you still?" she asked. “If I could get him Off.” “Guilty or not guilty ?’’ “Rather!" There was neither shame, pose, nor hesitation about that. Blanche 'went through into the room without a word, but her eyes shone finely in the lamplight. Then she returned with a book, and stood half in the balcony, framed as in a panel, looking for a place. “You remind me of ‘The Thousandth Man,’ ’’ she told him as she found It. “Who was he?” “He’s every man who does a thousandth part of what you’re doing!” said Blanche with confidence. And then she read, rather shyly and not too well: *> “On» man In a thousand,” Solomon says, “Will stick more closo than a brother. And it’s worth while seeking him half your days If you find him before the other. Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend On what the world sees in you, But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend With the whole round world agin you.” “I should hope he would," said Cazalet, "If he’s a man at all.” “But this is the bit for you,” said Blanche: •*Hls wrong’s your wrong, and his right’s your right, In season or out of season. Stand up and back it in all men’s sight— With that for your only reason! Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide The shame or mocking or laughter, But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side To the gallows-foot—and after!" The last words were italics In Blanche’s voice, and it trembled, but so did Cazalet’s as he cried out in his formula: 2

“That’s the finest thing I ever heard in all my life! But it’s true, and so It should be. I don’t take any credit for it.” "Then you’re all the more the thousandth man!” He caught her suddenly by the shoulders. His rough hands trembled; his jaw worked. "Look here, Blanche! If you had a friend, wouldn't you do the same?” “Yesr~lf I’d BU<Arv a friendas all that,” she faltered. “You’d stand by his side ‘to the gal-lows-foot’—if he was swine enough to let you?” "I dare say I might.” "However bad a thing it was —murder, If you like—and however much he was mixed up in it —not like poor Scruton?” “I’d try to stick to him," she said simply. “Then you’re the thousandth woman,” said Cazalet. “God bless you, Blanchle!” He turned on his heel in the balcony, and a minute later found the room behind him empty. He entered, stood thinking, and suddenly began looking all over for the photograph of himself, with a beard, which he had seen there a week before-

CHAPTER XII. ; Quid pro Quo. It was his blessing that had done it; up to then she had controlled her feelings in a fashion worthy of the title just bestowed upon her. If only he had stopped at that, and kept his blessing to himself! It sounded so very much more like a knell that Blanche had begun first to laugh, and then to make such a fool* of herself (as she herself reiterated) that she was obliged to run away in the worst possible order. But that was not the end of those four superfluous words of final benediction; before the night was out they had solved, to Blanche’s satisfaction, the hitherto impenetrable mystery of Cazalet's conduct. He had done something in Australia. something that fixed a gulf between him and her. Blanche did not mean something wrong, much less a crime, least of all any sort of complicity In the great crime which had been committed while he was on his wav home. But she believed the worst’ he had done waa to emulate his friend, Mr. Potts, and to get engaged or actually married to somebody in the bush. There was no reason why he should not; there never had been any sort or kind of understanding between herself and him; it was only as lifelong friends that they had written to each other, and that only once a year Lifelong friendships are traditionally fatal had both been free as air; and If he was free no longer, she had_absolutelX as. cause for complaint, even if she was fool enough to feel it. —' ~~ —— -All this she saw quite clearly in her very honpst heart And yet he might have told her; ha need not have flown

to see her, the instant he landed, or seemed so overjoyed, and ■uch a boy again, or made so much of her and their common memories! He need not have begun begging her, in a minute, to go out to Australia, and then never have mentioned it again.;., he might just as well haYlFtoldtiertf-hebad-cr-hoped to have a wife to welcome her! Of course he saw it afterward, himself; that was why the whole subject of Australia had been dropped so suddenly and for good. Most likely he had married beneath him; if so, she was very sorry, but he might have said that he was married. Curiously enough, it was over Martha that she felt least able to forgive him. Martha would say nothing, but her unspoken denunciations of Cazalet would be only less Intolerable than her unspoken sympathy with Blanche. Martha had been perfectly awful about the whole thing. And Martha had committed the final outrage of being perfectly right, from her idiotic point of view. Now among all these meditations of a long night, and of a still longer day, In which nobody even troubled to send, her word of the case at Kingston, it would be too much to say that no thought of Hilton Toye ever entered the mind of Blanche. She could not help liking him; he amused her immensely; and he had proposed to her twice, and warned her he would again. She felt the force of his warning, because she felt his force of character

and will. She literally felt these forces, as actual emanations from the strongest personality that had ever impinged upon her own. In the day of reaction, such considerations were bound to steal in as single spies, each with a certain consolation, not altogether innocent of comparisons. But the Battalion of Toye’s virtues only marched on Blanche when Martha came to her, on the little green rug of a lawn behind the house, to say that Mr. Toye himself had called and was in the draw-ing-room. Blanche stole up past the door, and quickly made herself smarter than she had ever done toy day for Walter Cazalet; at least she put on a "dressy" blouse, her calling skirt (which always looked new), and did what she could to her hair. All this was only because Mr. Toye always came down as if it were Mayfair, and it was rotten to make people feel awkward if you could help it So in sailed Blanche, in her very best for the light of day, to be followed as soon as possible by the silver teapot, though she had just had tea herself. And there stood Hilton Toye, chin blue and collar black, his trousers all knees and creases, exactly as he had jumped out of the boattrain. “I guess I’m not fit to speak to you,” he said, “but that’s just what I’ve come to do —for the third time!” "Oh, Mr. Toye!’’ cried Blanche, really frightened by the face that made his meaning clear. It relaxed a little as she shrank involuntarily, but the compassion in bis eyes and mouth did not lessen their steady determination. "I didn’t have time to make myself presentable,” he explained. “I thought you wouldn’t have me waste a moment if you understood the situation. I want you to promise to marry me right now!” Blanche began to breaths again. Evidently he was on the’eve of yet another of his journeys, probably back to America, and he wanted to go over engaged; at ilrst sbe had thought he had bad news to break to her, but this was no worse than she had heard before. Only it was more difficult to cope with him; everything was different, and he so much more pressing and precipitate. —She had never met this Hilton Toye before. Yes; she was distinctly frightened by him. But in a minute she had ceased to be frightened of herself; she knew her own mind once more, and spoke it. myoh as he had spoken his, quite compassionately, but just as tersely to the point. “One moment,” he interrupted. *T said nothing about my feelings, because they’re a kind of stale proposition by. this time; but for form’s sake I may state there’s no change there, except in the only direction I guess a person’s feelings are liable to change toward you, Miss Blanche! I’m a worse casejhan ever, if that makes any diff erenceT’J. .. . Blanche! shookJier yellow hea< "Nothing can,” she said. “There must be no possible mistake about it this time, because I want you to be very good and never ask me again. - - „ fro BX CONTWVXIX)

,ven ahi

"Look Here, Blanche! If You Had a Friend, Wouldn’t You Do It?”

"I Guess I’m Not Fit to Speak to You,” He Said.