foolish passion he had been trying so hard to think out of existence. Halfway to the Malibran he changed his direction, and drove to the house of the lawyer he had consulted at the time of his divorce. The lawyer had not yet come up town, and Ralph had a half hour of bitter meditation before the sound of a latch-key brought him to his feet. The visit did not last long. His host, after an affable greeting, listened without surprise to what he had to say, and when he had ended reminded him with somewhat ironic precision that, at the time of the divorce, he had asked for neither advice nor information-had simply declared that he wanted to "turn his back on the whole business" (Ralph recognized the phrase as one of his grandfather's), and, on hearing that in that case he had only to abstain from action, and was in no need of legal services, had gone away without further enquiries. "You led me to infer you had your reasons" the slighted counsellor concluded; and, in reply to Ralph's breathless question: "Why, you see, the case is closed, and I don't exactly know on what ground you can re-open it-unless, of course, you can bring evidence showing that the irregularity of the mother's life is such..." "She's going to marry again," Ralph interposed. "Indeed? Well, that in itself can hardly be described as irregular. In fact, in certain circumstances it might be construed as an advantage to the child." "Then I'm powerless?" "Why-unless there's an ulterior motive through which pressure might be brought to bear." "You mean that the first thing to do is to find out what she's up to?" "Precisely. Of course, if it should prove to be a genuine case of maternal feeling, I won't conceal from you that the outlook's bad. At most, you could probably arrange to see the child at stated intervals." To see the child at stated intervals! Ralph dimly wondered how a sane man could sit there, looking responsible and efficient, and talk such rubbish... As he got up to go the lawyer detained him to add: "Of course there's no immediate cause for alarm. It will take time to enforce the provision of the Dakota decree in New York, and till it's done your boy can't be taken from you. But there's sure to be a lot of nasty talk in the papers; and you're bound to lose in the end." Ralph thanked him and left. He sped northward again to the Malibran, where he learned that Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were at dinner. He sent his name down to the subterranean, and Mr. Spragg's stooping figure presently appeared between the limp portières of the "Adam" writing-room. He had grown older and heavier, as if illness instead of health had put more flesh on his bones, and there were greyish tints in the hollows of his sallow face. "What's this about Paul?" Ralph exclaimed. "My mother's had a message we can't make out." Mr. Spragg sat down, with the effect of immersing his spinal column in the depths of the armchair he selected. He crossed his legs, and swung one foot to and fro in its high wrinkled boot with elastic sides. "Didn't you get a letter?" he asked. "From my from Undine's lawyers? Yes." Ralph held it out. "It's queer reading. She hasn't hitherto shown any particular desire to have Paul with her." Mr. Spragg, adjusting his glasses, read the letter slowly, restored it to the envelope and handed it back. "My daughter has intimated that she wishes these gentlemen to act for her. I haven't received any additional instructions from her," he then said, with none of the curtness of tone that his stiff legal vocabulary implied. "But the first communication I received was from you-at least from Mrs. Spragg." Mr. Spragg drew his beard through his hand. "The ladies are apt to be a trifle hasty. I believe Mrs. Spragg had a letter yesterday instructing her to select a reliable escort for Paul; and I suppose she thought "Oh, this is all too preposterous!" Ralph burst out, springing from his seat. "You don't for a moment imagine, do you-any of you that I'm going to deliver up my son like a bale of goods in answer to any instructions in God's world? Oh, yes, I know-I let him go- Ralph, abruptly awakened from his I abandoned my right to him... but I dream of recovered peace, found himself didn't know what I was doing. I was confronted on every side by indifference sick with grief and misery. My people or hostility: it was as though the June were awfully broken up over the whole fields in which his boy was playing had business, and I wanted to spare them. I suddenly opened to engulph him. Mrs. wanted, above all, to spare my boy, when Marvell's fears and tremors were almost he grew up. If I'd contested the case you harder to bear than the Spraggs' antagknow what the result would have been. onism; and for the next few days Ralph I let it go by default-I made no condi- wandered about miserably, dreading some tions-all I wanted was to keep Paul, and fresh communication from Undine's lawnever to let him hear a word against his yers, yet racked by the strain of hearing mother!" nothing more from them. Mr. Spragg had agreed to cable his daughter, asking her to await a letter before enforcing her demands; but on the fourth day after Ralph's visit to the Malibran a telephone message summoned him to his father-inlaw's office. Mr. Spragg received this passionate appeal in a silence that implied not so much disdain or indifference, as the total inability to deal verbally with emotional crises. At length he said, a faint unsteadiness in his usually calm tones: "I presume at the time it was optional with you to demand Paul's custody." "Oh, yes-it was optional," Ralph sneered. Mr. Spragg looked at him compassionately. "I'm sorry you didn't do it," he said. XXXIII THE upshot of Ralph's visit was that Mr. Spragg, after considerable deliberation, agreed, pending farther negotiations between the opposing lawyers, to undertake that no attempt should be made to remove Paul from his father's custody. Nevertheless, he professed to think it quite natural that Undine, on the point of making a marriage which would put it in her power to give her child a suitable home, should seize the opportunity to assert her claim on him. It was more disconcerting to Ralph to learn that Mrs. Spragg, for once departing from her attitude of passive abstention, had eagerly abetted her daughter's move; he had somehow felt that Undine's desertion of the child had established a kind of mute understanding between himself and Mrs. Spragg. "I thought Mrs. Spragg at least would know there's no earthly use trying to take Paul from me," he said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty; and Mr. Spragg startled him by replying: "I presume his grandma thinks he'll belong to her more if we keep him in the family." Half an hour later their talk was over and he stood once more on the landing outside Mr. Spragg's door. Undine's answer had come and Paul's fate was sealed. His mother refused to give him up, refused to await the arrival of her lawyer's letter, and reiterated, in more peremptory language, her demand that the child, in Mrs. Heeny's care, should be despatched immediately to Paris. Mr. Spragg, in face of Ralph's entreaties, remained pacific but remote. It was clear that, though he had no wish to quarrel with Ralph, he saw no reason for resisting Undine. "I guess she's got the law on her side," he said; and in response to Ralph's passionate remonstrances he added fatalistically: "I presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter." Ralph had gone to the office resolved to control his temper and hold himself alert for any shred of information he might glean; but it soon became clear that Mr. Spragg knew as little as himself of Undine's projects, or of the stage her plans had reached. All she had apparently vouchsafed her parent was the statement that she intended to re-marry, and the command to send Paul over; and Ralph reflected that his own betrothal to her had probably been announced to Mr. Spragg in the same oracular fashion. The thought brought with it an overwhelming sense of the past. One by one the details of that incredible moment revived, and he felt in his veins the glow of rapture with which he had first ap proached the dingy threshold he was now leaving. There came back to him with peculiar vividness the memory of his rushing up to Mr. Spragg's office to consult him about a necklace for Undine. Ralph recalled the incident because his eager appeal for advice had been received by Mr. Spragg with the very phrase he had just used: "I presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter." Ralph saw him slouching in his revolving chair, swung sideways from the untidy. desk, his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his jaws engaged on the phantom toothpick; and, in a corner of the office, the business-like figure of a middlesized red-faced young man who seemed to have been interrupted in the act of saying something disagreeable. "Why, it must have been then that I first saw Moffatt," Ralph reflected; and the thought suggested the memory of other, subsequent meetings in the same building, and of frequent ascents to Moffatt's office during the ardent weeks of their mysterious and remunerative "deal." Ralph wondered if Moffatt's office was still in the Ararat; and on the way out he paused before the black tablet affixed to the marble panelling of the vestibule and sought and found the name in its familiar place. The next moment his whole mind was again absorbed in his own cares. Now that he had learned the imminence of Paul's danger, and futility of pleading for delay, a thousand fantastic projects were contending in his head. To get the boy away that seemed the first thing to do: to put him out of reach, and then invoke the law, get the case re-opened, and carry the fight from court to court till his rights should be recognized. It would cost a lot of money-well, the money would have to be found. The first step was to secure the boy's temporary safety; after that, the question of ways and means. would have to be considered... Had there ever been a time, Ralph wondered, when that question hadn't been at the root of all the others? He had promised to report the result of his visit to Clare Van Degen, and half an hour later he was in her drawing-room. It was the first time he had entered it since his divorce; but Van Degen was tarpon-fishing in California-and besides, he had to see Clare. His one relief was in talking to her, in feverishly turning over with her every possibility of delay and obstruction; and he was surprised at the intelligence and energy she brought to the discussion of these questions. It was as if she had never before felt strongly enough about anything to put her heart or her brains into it; but now everything in her was at work for him. She listened intently to what he told her; then she said at once: "You tell me it will cost a great deal; but why take it to the courts at all? Why not give the money to Undine instead of to your lawyers?" Ralph gave her a surprised glance, and she continued: "Why do you suppose she's suddenly made up her mind she must have Paul?" He shrugged impatiently. "That's comprehensible enough to any one who knows her. She wants him because he'll give her the appearance of respectability. His bodily presence will prove, as no mere assertions can, that all the rights are on her side and the 'wrongs' on mine." Clare considered. "Yes; that's the obvious answer. But shall I tell you what I think, my dear? You and I are both completely out-of-date. I don't believe Undine cares a straw for 'the appearance of respectability.' What she wants is the money for her annulment." Ralph looked at her in wonder. "Don't you see?" she hurried on. "It's her only hope-her last chance. She's much too clever to burden herself with the child. merely to annoy you. What she wants is to make you buy him back from her." She stood up and came to him with outstretched hands. "Perhaps I can be of use at last!" "You?" He summoned up a haggard smile. "As if you weren't always-letting me load you with my beastly bothers!" "Oh, if only I've hit on the way out of this one! Then there wouldn't be any others left!" Her eyes followed him intently as he turned away and stood staring out at the long sultry prospect of Fifth Avenue. As he stood there, turning over her conjecture, its probability became more and more apparent. It put into logical relation all the incoherences of Undine's recent conduct, completed and defined her anew as if a sharp line "If I'm "It will take a lot of money: all these law-suits do. Besides, she'd be ashamed to sell him cheap. You must be ready to give her anything she wants. And I've got a lot saved up-money of my own, I mean... "Your own?" He looked at her tenderly and curiously, noting the rare blush under her brown skin. "My very own. Why shouldn't you believe me? I've been hoarding up my scrap of an income for years, thinking that some day I'd find I couldn't stand this any longer..." Her gesture embraced their sumptuous setting. "But now I know I shall never budge. There are the children; and besides, things are easier for me since-" she paused embarrassed. "Yes, yes; I know." He felt like completing her phrase: "Since my wife has furnished you with the means of putting pressure on your husband"—but he simply repeated: "I know." "And you will let me help?" "Oh, we must get at the facts first." He caught her hands in his, glowing with energy. "As you say, when Paul's safe there won't be another bother left!" (To be continued.) THE HILL-BORN By Maxwell Struthers Burt You who are born of the hills, Hill-bred, lover of hills, Though the world may not treat you aright, This you will know above other men In the hills you will find your peace again. You who were nursed on the heights, Hill-bred, lover of skies, Though your love and your hope and your heart, Though your trust be hurt till it dies, This you will know above other men In the hills you will find your faith again. You who are brave from the winds, Hill-bred, lover of winds, Though the God whom you knew seems dim, This you will know above other men, In the hills you will find your God again. • THE POINT OF VIEW. I N the April number of SCRIBNER'S, under "The Point of View," the article concerning West Point appeals to me as somewhat misleading. In fact, I believe the general public is under a decidedly wrong impression regarding the examinations for West Point entrance to West Point and Anand napolis. That "the mental reAnnapolis quirements for admission are perfectly simple and perfectly elementary," and that "it is known that they have been kept perfectly elementary from the beginning in order to comply with the demand that the regions in which the available schooling was but elementary should have a fair chance with the regions in which it was further advanced," are opinions held by the uninitiated everywhere. When I was about sixteen years of age, I was promised an appointment to the Naval Academy. From what information I gathered relative to the entrance examinations, I felt supremely confident of my ability to pass them easily. To-day hundreds of boys acquire the same kind of information and are possessed of the same idea. Then they fail. But luckily for me, a change in party control in my district deprived me of the appointment. Experience as a teacher has convinced me that I should have failed miserably, despite the fact that I had gone through a reputable high-school, and that with a grade each year high enough to relieve me of all examinations excepting one. Inasmuch as the entrance examinations to both West Point and Annapolis are in progress as I write, the topic is timely, and the blame for the many failures should be placed where it belongs-on the secondary schools of the country, on the misleading information given out relative to the examinations, and on the severity of the examinations. Let me quote a few questions from recent examinations. Arithmetic: "If 112 lbs. of copper be drawn into 1 mile, of wire, find the area of the cross section, the specific gravity of copper being 8.96." "A passenger train running 45 miles per hour overtakes a freight train 11⁄2 times as long, running 27 miles per hour, and passes it in 25 seconds. How long would the passenger train take to pass a platform 165 yards long?” "Forty pounds Troy of standard gold, containing alloy, are minted into 1,869 sovereigns. Find the number of grains of pure gold in a sovereign; and also the value of a light-weight sovereign that contains one grain less of pure gold than it should, standard gold being worth £3, 17 sh., 9 d. per Troy ounce." These questions counted one-half of one whole question out of five or six questions to the entire examination. Even the mechanical work in these examinations generally consists of intricate problems that seldom yield a simple answer. Algebra: "If a carriage wheel 143 ft. in circumference takes one second longer to revolve, the rate of the carriage will be reduced 223 miles per hour. Find the original rate of the carriage." "If one cu. in. aluminum weighs .092 lb., and one of copper weighs .31 lb., find the percentage of composition by weight of a mixture of the two weighing .276 lb. to the cubic inch." "Solve y2+ 2xy—20y+9x2—92x +244=0 for y; and show that y will have real values only when the value of x lies between 3 and 6. For what values of x will the equation be a perfect square?" World's history (this subject was eliminated this year as a requirement for Annapolis): "Give the principal events in the history of Egypt. Name the characters that played the leading parts in the history of Greece from 1100 B. C. to 146 B. C. What did each do? Give a brief outline of the main events in the history of the Roman Republic." This was the first question in an examination containing four given in 1906. Now you will note that the questions are really elementary; but are they perfectly simple? Let him who thinks so sit down and work them out; and by the time he has finished he will very likely take his hat off to the boys that have passed them with a good mark. And let him remember that he hasn't all the time he wants to work them |