Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1919 — Page 2

PIECES OF EIGHT

CHAPTER Vll—Continued. Bat alas! they did not begin till rotne six feet above my bead, and the way was sheer. How was I to reach the lowest rung? The rock was too sheer for me to cut Steps in. as I had done farther back. "I looked about me. Again the luck was with me. In one of the caves I had noticed some broken pieces of fallen rock. They were terribly heavy, but despair lent me strength, and after an hour or two’s work, I had managed to roll several of them to the foot of the ladder, and —with an effort of which I would not have believed myself capable—had been able to build them one on top of another against the wall. So, I found myself able to grasp the lowest rung with my hands. Then, fastening the lantern round my neck with my necktie, I prepared to mount. The climb was not difficult, once I had managed to get my feet on the first rung of the ladder, but there was always the chance that one of the rungs might have rusted loose with time, in which case, of course, it would have given way in my grasp, and I should have been precipitated backward to certain death below. However, the man who had mortised them had done an honest piece of work, and they proved as firm as on the day they were placed there. Up and up I went, till I must have been forty feet above the floor, and, then, as I neared the foot, instead of coming to a trap door, as I had conjectured, I found that the ladder came to an end at the edge of a narrow ledge, running along the ceiling much as a runs near the roqf of some old churches. On to this I managed to climb. It was barely a yard wide, and the impending roof did not permit of one’s standing erect. It was a dizzy situation, and it seemed safest to crawl along on all fours, holding the, lantern in front of me. Presently It brought me up sharp in a narrow recess. It had come to an end. Yes! but Imagine my joy! it had come to an end at a low archway rudely cut in the rock. Deep set in the archway was a stout wooden door. My first thought was that I was trapped again, but, to my infinite surprise and gratitude, it proved to be slightly ajar, and a vigorous push sent it grinding back on its hinges. What next? I wondered. At all events, I was no longer lost in the bowels of the earth; step by step, I was coming nearer to the frontiers of humanity. But I was certainly not prepared for what next met my eyes, as I pushed through the low dobrway with my lantern, and looked around. Yes! Indeed, man had certainly been here, man, too, very purposeful and businesslike. I was in a sort of low narrow gallery, some forty feet long, to

I Was in a Sort of Low, Narrow Gallery, Some Forty Feet Long.

which the arching rock made a cryptlike ceiling. At my first glance, I saw that there was another door at the far end similar to the one I had entered by; and on the left side of the gallery, built of rough stones from the low ceiling to the floor, was a series of compartments, each with locked wooden door. They were Strong and grim; looking, and aiightWve been taken i for prison cells, or family vaults, or ' possibly wine blns. The massive locks ! were red with rust, and there was ] plainly no possibility of opening them. On the other side, of the gallery there was a litter of old chains, and some boards, probably left over from rhe doors. Yes, and there were two old flintlock guns, and several cut--1 lasses, all eaten away with rust, also a rough seaman’s chest open and falling to pieces. At the sight of that, a wild thought flashed through my brain. What if— Good God I What if this was John Teach’s treasury—behind

BEING THE AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF A TREASURE DISCOVERED IN THE BAHAMA ISLANDS IN THE YEAR 1903. NOW FIRST GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC

By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

And then I had an idea. Why not make the fire against the door at the end of the gallery, and so burn my way through. Bravo! My spirits rose at the thought, and I set to at once —splitting some small kindling with my knife. In a few minutes I had quite a sprightly little fire going at the bottom of the door; but I saw that I should have to be extravagant with my wood if the fire was to be effective. However, it was neck or nothing; so I piled on beams and boards till my fire roared like a furnace, and presently I had the Joy of seeing it begin to take hold of the door —which, after a short time, began to crackle and splutter in a very cheering fashion. Whatever lay beyond, it was evident that I should soon be able to break my way through the obstacle, and, indeed, so it proved; for, presently, I used one of the boards as a battering rain, and, to my Inexpressible joy, it went crashing through, with a shower of sparks, and it was but the work of a few more minutes before the whole door fell flaming down, and I was able to leap through the doorway into the darkness on the other side. As I stood there, peering ahead, apd holding aloft a burning stick—which proved, however, a poor substitute for my lantern —a wonderful sound smote my ears. I could not believe it, and my knees shook beneath me. It was the sound of the sea. Yes, it jyas no illusion. It was the sound that the sea makes singing and echoing through hollow caves—the sound I heard that night as I stood at the moonlit door of Calypso’s cavern, and saw that vision which my heart nearly broke to remember. Calypso! Oh CSttlypso! where was she at this moment? Pray God that she was indeed safe, as her father had said. But I had to will her from my mind, to keep from going mad.

And my poor torch had gone out, having, however, given jne light enough to see that the door which I had just burnt through let out onto a narrow platform on the side of a roek that went slanting down into a chasm of blackness, through which, as in a great shell, boomed that murmuring of the sea. It had a perilous ugly look, and it was plain that it would be foolhardy to attempt it at the moment without a light; and my fire was dying down. Besides, I was beginning to feel light-headed and worn out, partly from lack of food, no doubt. As there was no food to be had, I recalled the old French proverb, “He eats who sleeps”—or something to that effect —and I determined to husband my strength once more with a brief rest However, as I turned to throw some more wood on my fire — preparing to indulge myself with a little campfire cheerfulness as I dozed off —my eyes fell once more on that grim line •of locked doors; and my curiosity, and an idea, made me wakeful again. I bad burned down one door —why not another? Why not, indeed? So I raked oyer my fire to the family vault nearest to me, and presently had it roaring and licking against the stout door. It was, apparently, not so solid as the gallery door had been. At all events, it kindled more easily, and it whs not long before I had the satisfaction of battering that down too. As I did so, I caught sight of something in the interior that made me laugh aloud and behave generally like a ipadman. Of course, I didn’t believe my eyes—but they persisted in declaring, nevertheless, that there in front of me was a great iron-bound

Copyrigbt by Donbleday, Pare a Company

those grim doors. 1 threw’ myself with all my force against one and then the other. For the moment I forgot that my paramount business was to escape. But I might as well have hurled myself against the solid rock. And, at that moment, I noticed that the place was darker than it had been. My lantern was going out. In a moment or two I should be in the pitch dark, and I had discovered that the door, at the end of the gallery was as solid as the others. I was to be trapped, after all; and I pictured myself slowly dying there of hunger—the pangs of which I was already beginning to feel —and some one, years hence, finding me there, a moldering skeleton —some one w’ho would break open those doors, uncover those gleaming hoards, and moralize on the irony of my end; condemned to die there of starvation, with the treasure I had so long sought on the other side of those unyielding doors. Old Tom's words suddenly flashed over me, and I could feel my hair literally beginning to rise. “There never was a buried treasure yet that didn't claim its victim.” Great God ’ —and I was to be the ghost, and keep guard in this terrible tomb till the next dead man came along to relieve me of my sentry duty! Frantically I turned up the wick of my lantern at the thought—but it was no use; it was plainly going out. I examined my match box; I had still a dozen or so matches left. And then my eye fell on that shattered chest. There were those boards, too. At all events I could build a fire and make torches of slivers of wood, so long as the wood lasted.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

oaken chest, to begin with. It might not, of course, contain anything but bones —but it might—! The thing was too absurd. I must have fallen asleep -i-must be already dreaming! But no! I was laboring with all my strength to open It with one of those rusty cutlasses. It was a tough Job, but my strength was as the strength of ten, for the old treasurehunting lust was upon me, and I had forgotten everything else in the world for the time. At last, with a great as though its heart were breaking at having to give up its secret at last, it crashed open. I fell on my knees as though I had been struck by lightning, for it was literally brimming over with silver and gold pieces—doubloons and pieces of eight; English and French coins, too —guineas and louis d’or: “all” —as Tobias’ manuscript had said —“all good money.” For a while I knelt over it, dazed and blinded, lost; then I slowly plunged my hands into if; and let the pieces pour and pour through them, literally .bathing them in gold and silver, as I had read of misers doing. Then suddenly I broke out Into an Irish jig—never having had any notion of doing such a thing before. In fact I behaved as I have read of men doing, whom a sudden fortune has bereft of reason. For the time, at all events, I was a gibbering madman. Certainly, there was to be no sleep for me that night! But, in the full tide of my frenzy, I suddenly noticed something that brought me up sharp. Out beyond the doorway it was growing light. It was only a dim tremulous suffusion of it, indeed, but it was real daylight—oozing in from somewhere or other —the blessed, blessed, daylight! God be praised!

CHAPTER VIII. In Which I Understand the Feelings of a Ghost. So, I surmised, I had been underground a whole day and two nights, and this was the morning of the second day after Calypso’s disappearance. ,What had been happening to her all this time! My flesh crept at the thought, and, with that daylight stealing in like a living presence, and the sound and breath of the sea, my anguish returned a hundredfold. As I stood on the little ro?ky platform outside the door through which I had burned my way, and looked down into the glimmering chasm beneath, and heard the fresh voice of the sea huskily rumbling and reverberating about hidden grottoes and channels, all that Calypso was to me came back with the keenness of a sword through my heart. Ah! there was my treasure —as I had known when my eyes first beheld her —compared with which that gold and silver in there, whose gleam had made me momentarily distraught, was but so much dust and ashes. Ardently as I had sought it, what wgs it compared to one glance of her eyes? What if in the same hour, I had lost my true treasure, and found the false? At the thought, that glittering heap became abhorrent to me, and, without looking back, I sought for some way by which I could descend. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw’ that there were some shallow steps cut diagonally in the rock, and down these I had soon made my way, to find myself in a roomy corridor, so much like that in which I had seen Calypso standing in the moonlight, that, for a moment,’! dreamed it was the same, and started to run down- it, thinking, indeed, that my troubles were over—that in another moment I would emerge through that enchanted door and face the sea.

But alas! instead of. a broad shining doorway, and open arms of freedom widespread for me to leap into, I came at last to a mere long narrow slit-r----through which I could gaze as a man gazes through a prison window at the sky. The entrance had once been wide and free, but a mass of rock had fallen from above and blocked it up, leaving only a long crack through which the tides passed to and fro. I was still in my trap; it seemed more terrible than ever, now that I could see freedom so close, her very voice calling to me, singing the morning song of the sea. But in the caverns behind me, I heard another mocking song, and I felt a cold breath on my cheek, for death stood by my side a-grin. “The treasure!” he whispered, “I need you to guard that The treasure you have risked all to win—the treasure for which you have lost —your treasure! You cannot escape. Go back and” count your gold. ‘lt is all good money !* Ha! ha! *it is all good money!’ ” The illusion seemed so'real to me that I cried aloud “I will not die! I will not die!”—cried it so loud, that anyone in a passing boat might have heard me, and shuddered, wondering what poor ghost it was waiting among the rocks. _ But the fright had done me good, apd I nerved myself for another effort. If only I could wriggle past that contraction In the middle, I should be safe. And if I stuck fast midway! But

the more I measured the width with my eye, the less the narrowing seemed to be. To be so slightly perceptible, it conld hardly be enough to make much difference. Caution whispered that it might be enough to make the difference between life and death. But already my choice of those two august alternatives was so limited as hardly to be called a choice. On the one hand, I could worm my way back through the caves and tunnels through which I had passed, and try my luck again at the other end. “With half a dozen matches!” sneered a voice that sounded like Tobias’ —“Precisely” . . . and the horror of it was more than I dared face again anyway. So there was nothing for it but this aperture, hardly wider than one of those deep stone slits that stood for windows in a Norman castle. It was my last chance, and I meant to take it like a man. I stood for a moment nerving myself and taking deep breaths, as though I expected to take but few more. Then, my left arm extended, I entered sidewise, and began to edge myself along. It was easy enough for a yard or two,

“All Good Money.”

after which it was plain that it was beginning to narrow. Very slightly indeed, but still a little. However, I could still go on, and —I could still go back. I went on—more slowly it is true, yet still I progressed. But the rock was perceptibly closer to me. I tfad to struggle harder. It was beginning to hug me —very gently—but it was beginning. I paused to take breath. I could not turn my head to look back, but I judged that I had come over a third of the way. I was coming up to the waist that I had feared, but I could still go on—very slowly, scarce more than an inch at every effort; yet every inch counted, and I had lots of time. My feet and head were free —which was the main thing. Another good push or two, and I should be at the waist —should know my fate. I gave the good push or two, and suddenly the arms of the rock were around me. Tight and close, this time, they hugged me. They held me fast, like a rude lover, and would not let me go. My knees and feet were fast, and the walls on each side pressed my cheeks. My head too was fast. I could not move an inch forward—and it was too late to go back! Panic swept over me. I felt that my hair must be turning white. Presently I ceased ••to struggle. But the rocks held me in their giant embrace. There W'as no need for me to do anything. I could go on resting there — it was very comfortable —till — And then I felt something touching my feet, running away and then touching them again. O God! It w’as the incoming tide! It would — And then I prepared myself to die. I suppose I was light-headed, with the strain and the lack of food, for, after the first panic, I found myself dreamily, almost luxuriously, making pictures of how brave men had died in the past—brave women too. I fancied myself in one and another situation. But the picture that persisted was that of the Conciergerie during the French revolution. Then the picture vanished, as I felt the swish of the tide round my ankles. It would soon be up to my knees — It was up to my knees —it was creeping past them —and it was making that hollow’ song in the caves behind me that had seemed so kind to me that very morning, the song it had made to Calypso . . . that far-off night under the moon. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Rooster Ate 486 Kernels.

A storekeeper at Montgomery City has sprung a new one in the guessing game. He took a big. rooster and,' after letting him fast for a day, put him in his show window with a large pan of corn, the kernels of which had been counted. He offered a prize to the persons guessing nearest the number of grains the rooster would eat in 20 minutes. , The rooster had a ravenous appetite and for five minutes it looked as if there would not be a single kernel left. - But by the time the 20 minutes had elapsed he had curled up in a corner. He had succeeded in putting away 486 grains. A woman whose guess was 488 not the prize.—Kansas City Times.

INTERESTING ITEMS FROM THE CITIES

Fashion in Woman’s Dress Jolted at the U. of I. URBANA, ILL. —Fashion In woman’s dress has received a severe jolt from Leona Hope, author of a circular printed by the home economics department of the coL’ege of agriculture of the University of Illinois. It is full of

and the eyes of men—and jealous women. But somehow we can’t just bring ourselves to do it. The only trouble with subscribing to the principle Is that this dizzy old world Is populated with human beings. And human beings certainly are sond 1 , of looking at things they like to look at. • Let one girl attire herself merely with regard to' “protection and modesty” and let her twin sister decorate herself In accordance with State street’s latest dictates. Let them both stroll across the campus of the U. of I. We would wrnger the amount of the university’s biennial appropriation that 99 per cent of the university’s attention—feminine as well as masculine — would be centered on the foolish assembler of fashion’s wild dreams, even if her throat were bare to a winter blizzard or her neck swathed in summer furs, rather than upon her ultramodest sister. “The Kids They Kill; the Robbers They Let Go” CHICAGO. —In the opinion of the police, Rudolph Boruda was a good man—dead. They knew him as a nervy crook, who used a gun. Much congratulatory slapping took place in the Deering street police station the morning after

Boruda was killed. The detectives who “got” him shook hands all around. “Two or three more killings would give these kid bandits something to think about,” the detective sergeant said. ' A woman hurried into the station —a little old woman with a black shawl about her head. She was weeping. “Rudie”—she cried, clinging to a detective’s arm, “what have you done

with my boy. I’m his ma.” The police told her. “It’s a lie,” she wept. “The kids they kill, and the robbers they let go. He wasn’t a bad boy—only eighteen—he wasn’t a bandit- ” Over and over again she repeated it, as if trying to convince herself. At last she went crying down the alley toward home. On the rickety steps of the Boruda home at 2866 Keeley street were Rudie’s three weeping sisters. The mother silently took her place among them. “He t . was a swell kid,” sighed a blowsy woman neighbor, who had come over to condole. .“It’s a shame the way them cops kill people.” “He wasn’t a bandit,” screamed the mother. “He’s my boy —I know. Why, when he was getting sls a week at the machine shop he used to give me every penny of it. Didn’t he take me to all the socials at the society? Is a kid like that a bandit? He was only a kid —just eighteen ” Boruda was shot by Detectives Byrnes and Mulcahey. He w’as driving a stolen automobile and answered an order to stop with a pistol shot. He kept on firing until killed.

Doors of Penitentiary Open for Woman Kidnaper PITTSBURGH. —The state penitentiary’s doors have swung open for Helen McDermott Boyle, the Chicago woman convicted ten years ago in Mercer county and sentenced to serve 25 years for complicity In the kidnaping of Billy, the son of Attorney James P.

father died broken-hearted. Her mother Is now eighty. There was bitter opposition from Attorney Whitla. z Helen Boyle leaves with no mark of prison upon her. Ten years of confinement have treated her lightly. An indomitable determination tha* she “would not weaken” has saved her the physical ravages of a penitentiary sen tence. • There is not a silver thread in her hair—she is now twenty-nine—and only a few lines under her lustrous eyes. She left prison regretting, she says, the “youthful mistake” that landed her behind the bars with*a husband 15 years her senior. ' x , Although confinement failed to stifle her spirit, the years have rested heavily on Jimmy Boyle. The toll of confinement has given him a seamed face and snowwhite hair. She says Jimmy Boyle’s wife Helen is dead. Helen McDermott is left and wants to forget. “East Lynne” Stuff in the Country.and the City GALESBURG. ILL. —Our story opens on a fair summer’s day in the sylvan cornside four and one-half miles east of Avon, 11l. —the 160-acre farm of C. B. Eshelman. It is the dinner hour. Wearily, from the farmhouse hack

door a woman in gingham dress walks to the hickory pole just off the barnyarh, at the top of which is suspended g bell. She pulls the rope—once, twice, thrice. And as the clarion summons sounds Farmer Eshelman and his husky hands may be seen leaving the fields for the noonday repast Mrs. Eshelman has prepared. Now then*. James Raywatt of Galesburg forty-five, handsome, a bachelor —happened to own the 160

acres just south of the Eshelman farm. Get the setting: Lonesome farmer’s wife—drudgery, no respite from daily routine; resigned, no doubt, but dreaming—as women will. Along comes city fell**-; sympathetic, chivalrous. Wowie. Now for the ’‘East Lynne stuff * “Jim” had no one to cook for him, so he boarded at Charley’s house— Charlev is Mr. Eshelman. > ” Charley was intent oh making this year’s crop yield a goodly profit, sc he didn’t observe the budding romance until his wife—her name’s Rose dis anneared as did Jim. Charley also says SI,OOO disappeared from a cupboard Charley and Reed F. Cutler, state’s attorney of Fulton county, went to Chicago. They'were sleuthing on Mich. BouL near Monroe when Charley StoP^' d herX t thS t gab there’s that gal. There’s Big Jirf with her. She’s ail dreS^I d don’t watita go back. I won’t go back. There wa’n’t no spica of romance in your life," screamed Rose. ! . • “Police, police!” yelled Reed, and East Lynne was transferred to the central detail station. .

shocking details calculated to bear out the assertion that “the function of dress Is not limited to protection and: modesty Is very evident.” “Bareback waists," thin silk stockings, bow legsand things really too Intimate to repeat here are attacked. But why worry? L Of course thevery nice and proper thing to do is toagree also that women—especially young women —should not doll themselves up beyond the point necessary for protection from the sun and rain-

Whitla, Sharon, Pa., who was spirited away from schobl on March 18, 1908. and held for SIO,OOO ransom. The case attracted nation-wide attention. James Boyle, the woman’s husband, Is serving a life sentence. The state board of pardons acted favorably upon the prison board’s recommendation that she be paroled. A fight to release Mrs. Boyle began several years ago and was based on the feebleness of her parents. Her