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Show vr4TvTvv--THE f COURT-MARTIA- tttttttttv-ttv-vv-vttttBy E. F. Spence. ? The young man walked up and lown, up and down, feverishly; the working of his face showed Intense anxiety, since In a few minutes his fate would be decided. The other two men looked on sadly, for they pitied him; he was the pet of the regiment the best at polo, the crack shot, the freest with his money and lightest with his tongue. Even his beauty, his found indisputable manly beauty, favor with them, and Terence said, monotonously, "He's a handsome lad, and can win a girl quicker with a glance of his eye than most with a bushel of words." Up and down, up and down, with clenched hands, set teeth, and eyes; up and down, like a prisoner waiting for the hangman. Suddenly came a knock at the door, some words and an elderly man entered. The two privates saluted, and, on a brief word of command, disappeared. The men stood face to face; one in the gloom, the other in the light, which fell on the haggard, handsome ace of a man of thirty a dark face, rich In beauty of a sensual type. The was handsome, too, though almost old fifty-fivat least with a countenance rather finely ascetic In style, exquisitely cut, but hard in line. "Frank," said the elder; "Frank." "Yes," In a needless whisper came from the other. "Frank, all the Court believe In your innocence, and "You do. Colonel?" "Yes." The young man rushed forward and clasped the hand of the Colonel, a cold, dry, limp hand. "Thank God! Thank you. Colonel!" A strange smile glimmered in the Colonel's face. "Yes, I; The pause was awful. "But the evidence is overwhelming." Frank's head and hand dropped. "We can't help ourselves; the evidence Is overwhelming." "Yet you believe?" "As man, yes; as a tribunal? You see, Sanderson, a man of twenty years' valuable service and unimpeachable character, swears that " "Oh, yes, I know; let me be in peace." "You must listen swears that he saw you climb down from the window, You and then look round carefully. could not see him, for he was behind a bush. You came from the room where the regiment keeps it little treasure of trophies, and under one arm bore a burden." "Colonel, Colonel!" "He followed you to your rooms, cot daring to speak to you, an officer, and you entered very quietly with He made a report, unyour latch-key- . fortunately, to Deauclere, who hates you." "I've wiped his eyes at every game." "Bcauciere called to see you early next day, and, .coming in suddenly, found In your hands the massive salver of gilded stiver and gems presented by the Indian Prince and worth a lot of money. Generally, you are hard up, and you had no explanation." "Yes, yes, "There Is no but. All of us would be Id your favor, all would Imagine that Sanderson was mistaken and that some enemy had hidden the trophy !& your room; but you said you were a burnt when the thing was done, and decline yes, refuse to say where you were. What can we do? Bo long as you refuse to tell, our duty Is as clear as It Is painful. We just act on the evidence before us." The young officer's face showed Intense anguish. "Well," continued the Colonel, snd a strange smile crept over his harden ed, handsome face, "we consider that an alibi Is your only real defense." Frank shuddered. "It's like an Old t. Bailey horror! he exclaimed. "Yen, an alibi. We are convinced our reputation as a libertine has 11 as to the Idea that you cannot tell ns where you were at the fatal time be cause to do so you would have to com promise come lady." The young officer started bark, his face turned to the color of old Ivory, "Compromise some lady," be mutter ed; then murmured. "But suppose It mere the case, Colonel f" The present case Is one of being dtummed out of the army and then tfld by some damned civilian and Oh, Lord. Icsptleoned as a burglar. and your old Trank! to think of that, Look here. friend. father, my dear We've thought It out. Of course, you can't glvs away a woman; bat we've terror-stricke- n half-inaudib- new-com- er e, I" but" but" chosen three Wilson, Howard, and I. They are dry old sticks, with no wives to talk to, and I Can't you trust me?" "Oh, sir," said the prisoner. "I would trust you with my life!" "Well, it's quite simple. You tell us your secret under a solemn oath of secrecy. If we are satisfied, and tell the Court that we are satisfied, they will take our word that you were elsewhere at the time and acquit you. It's a bit irregular, but you may rely on us." The face of the young man was that of Tantalus at his acutest moment. "I can't, I can't it isn't honor- able!" "Would I advise you would we advise you to act dishonorably?" "To tell her name to three men?" "Well, I suppose her servant knew the secret, and you can trust us as much. Why, she couldn't refuse to permit you, if she were asked. You don't object to Wilson or to Howard? They're honorable men who would die rather than betray the secret. You believe they're honorable, don't you?" The young man made a gesture of assent. "Then you don't trust me?" "Oh, Colonel, you are the soul of honor; but I can't, I can't!" "Can't tell me? Why not?" "I didn't say that," was the stam mered answer. "Why not why not?" came the re ply, fiercely. "There can be only two reasons; either you won't, trust me, or" A long, aching pause. "Or yes, by God, it was your wife!" The young officer's eyes dropped; the Colonel sprang forward and struck him In the face, so hard as to send him reeling back; immediately, by in stinct, the Captain clutcned at his empty scabbard. "I oughtn't to have struck you; but, curse you, now you may rot in Jail!" "You don't know how I was tempted, how long I resisted, how miserably my weakness has made me!" "And I, the old fool who married a lovely, penniless girl, young enough to be his daugnter, and find that she and the son of his old friend, the young man to whom he's been a second father Oh, God, I can't believe it, can't believe that she was so base and you so contemptlblej" The prisoner stood silent, a pitiful fifure of shame. "I can't believe It, and, great Heavens, I don't believe it! You scoundrel! You damned blackguard! It's a lie, a trap, a trick to catch me! You were the thief, and you think in this way to stop my mouth and make me save you in order to protect my own honor." He raised his hand again. The young man made no defensive movement. Colonel," he said, gasping. "I'm not so vile as that! I'm bad enough, God knows, but not ao mean as that!" "I don't believe you, and your trick shan't save you, even if risk my honor." The true position of the matter was forgotten by the prisoner, anxious now only to show that he was innocent of this awful new charge. "I swear you are wrong. Colonel; by all that's holy, I swear it!" "If It Is true. If it Is true Oh. I must know the truth! If It's true, you most have some proof, some letters. Prove it, prove it, and I'll save you and send her to her parents without scandal. I can't live uncertain about her. You must have some letters." The young man was too greatly agitated to notice how strange were the voice and bearing of the Colonel, or to see that they indicated rage and hatred rather than horror or sorrow. "I can prove it." said Frank. "I have destroyed all her letters save one the one of that night." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, glanced at It, sighed, anJ handed It to the Colonel. "My Darling. He- goes tonight to Winchester, and won't return till tomorrow. Do not come before 12 on account of the servants. Marie will . let you In. Ever, ever yours, "Is that the only letter absolutely the only letter you have?" "Yes, on my honor." The Colonel deliberately fore the letter In a dozen pieces and tossed them Into the fire; then be laughed It mas an awful laugh. "You damned fool!" he Bald; "you damned young fool! The Court never sent me in to see you. I know you were her lover before t came In; and, more than that, t know you are Innocent of the theft. Sanderson, faithful to me as a dog, carried out for me the trap I had laid for you." "Tba trap!" exclaimed the prisoner. - "Yes,"replied the elder man. "I wanted revenge when I found out that I deterthat that you and she mined to have my revenge. Curse you! But duels can't be fought, and to have caught and killed you in an excusable way would have dirtied my name. So, I pretended to go to Winchester for the night, and, when Sanderson saw you leave your rooms at midnight, he crept in and put in the trophy, to which he had access by my key. And now" and he laughed "and now you will be convicted as a thief; and you are a thief. You stole my wife and my honor, and you will be drumiued out of the army and sent to rot in jail." The young man had sunk back in the chair, as If paralyzed by the awful discovery. "You shall pay, and she shall pay, too. There will be no scandal, but a man who could catch you so prettily can find a way quietly to break a woman's heart, and I'll do It! I'd kill her but for the scandal. I can do worse." There was such an air of devilish joy in the man, such a look of loathsome glee distorting his handsome, hard face, that the young man saw there was no hope. "Colonel," he said, In a staggerlns voice, "you have your revenge. I have suffered terribly already. You had better let me die and escape the humiliation of coming before the Court Why, you would like to have the pleasure of seeing mo kill myself?" "That's true enough, and I suppo you will do it, sooner or later, and it will hush up the scandal a little. So, for your father's sake " And he pulled out his revolver and put It on the table. The young man took it up with a listless air. "I do not ask for mercy; I do not attempt to tell you what a mean hound. I feel for my treachery to you. Even your treachery to me does not wipe out that; but; Colonel, for God's sake pity her. She was young and gay, and you " "I am old," replied the Colonel, fiercely; "old, but not toothless! Oh, I'll make her pay for this! To have taken her from a shop, to have given her my name and position and money, and to be " "Oh. but pity her. Colonel; don't punish her!" "Punish her! I'll make my revenge hld-eouus- on her harder t'nan on you! Oh, re- venge is sweet enough, and all have to live for!" "You fool; you damned fool!" shouted the young man, in a strange voice. The elder man looked up. guessed, screamed "Murder! Help!" and dashed forward. Too late, for one bullet crashed Into his chest and the other sank into his brain. The guards rushed in, but before they could lay hands upon the murderer he had fallen beside his victim with a hole drilled through bis heart And the woman lives, the beautiful young woman still lives, and the images of two men haunt her. I COULDN'T LOSE HIM. Relative Who Was Not Wanted Thought a Mistake Was Made. A story Is being told In London ebout a man prominent In public life, whose name may not be mentioned, which Illustrates the Insecurity of human preparations, says Harper's Weekly. He was planning an entertainment, on an elaborate scale, to be given to various friends In the neighborhood of his country seat. Unfortunately, his neareat neighbor, a close relative, Is highly uncongenial to him-eel- f and his Intimates, and he wracked his brains to devise a scheme by which he might avoid the necessity of Inviting the undesirable cousin to be am mg his guests. "I have It!" he announced to his wife at breakfast on the morning of the event. "I'll send him some tickets for the play tonight In town. Of coursr? hell be delighted, a he seldom has an opportunity of going to the theater." The tickets were accordingly sent, and the host, with an easy conscience, proceeded to enjoy the company of his But his satisfaction was of friends. short duration. At the height of the festivities in walked the objec tionalt'e neighbor. "Such a stupid mistake you made." be announced, as b approached his cousin; "as soon as I heard about your party I knew that you must have sent me the tickets for the wrong night, so I got them changed for tomorrow even lng and came right over here as soon as t could." A from Constantinople sarf that Russia had ased permission of t.ii sultan to allow several warships o paM through the Dardanelles for Ui Fai A dlspath East CONQUERING BY A .Ths Great Work Wrought choosing for his assistant Alferd Slaaa. "Build qnickly, build securely," wera his order from the big telephone company. Just a week ajro he invited the Western Society of Engineers and the foremost business men of Chicago to la spect what be had done. They found that in twenty-fou- r months, or much less when the days ars taken out, he had constructed 91,411 feet of tunnel forty feet underground. Where blue clay walls were opened up he had placed concrete 140,000 0 barrels of Portland cement, used of crushed cubic yeards stone, 100,000 cubic yards of gravel, and hat excavated 235,000 cubic yards of clay. He had employed as high as l,500 men at one time on the work and not killed or injured one of them. With the use of compressed air ha had driven his excavation work ahead at the rate of 300 linear feet per working day, and in 1902 he had but 18S working days. He opened a way for the carrying of the cables of 100,000 telephone wires, for the laying of a -six pound steel rail with a two-foto carry a 3 12x3 guage steel car capable of holding four cubla yards of loose material. He had made It possible for the electric locomotives to pass through this tunnel, haulins ten, twelve and fourteen cars of freight at a time. He had put in a concrete wall so hard that it took his workmen eight days to cut out three feet of Its face. This was concrete having after six days' setting a tensile strength of 679 days, 851 pounds; after twenty-seve- n 974 pounds pounds; after three months, and after one year, 1,096 pounds. By working in the leased basements of buildings he had taken out all of his excavated material at night without soiling or clogging the streets, without interfering with regular traffic. He located eight shafts with electric elevators in different sections of the downtown, district and through them brought his waste material out and his concrete In without the slightest publio MAN. In Chica- go by George W. Jackson. I am of the opinion that there is not city, big or small in the West and for that matter in the East, that through its press tad proper authorities might not awll read this story of bow a man, a strong-facenervy individual, pushed his way through twenty miles of blue clay, forty feet below the surface of the streets, and gave to the municipality of Chicago a complete solution of its underground wires and surface freight a -- non-workin- d, 40,-00- problem. Ills great work in the business heart Chicago was only completed last week, ust two years after he strated, and last Saturday he had the honor of of having more than 2.000 engjners, bankers, merchants, business men and others inspect his tunnel work, and then take barges and visit the bridge works of the Jackson & Corbett corporation on the north branch of the river. His name Is George W. Jackson. He Is more picturesque than McDonald of New York, because, while not enjoying; such exploitation of the dally press as the other has, he has accomplished more. His life has been given to putting inconvenient, awkard and obstructing things where they cannot Jlsturb pedestrian team traffic. He has also given a considerable portion of his career as a builder to showing how underground work can be done without loss of human life, without or weakening established buildwithout ings, clogging the streets with debris and the teams which must handle the same. Mr. Jackson has taken the broad ground that to the surface of all public streets belongs travel, the travel of pedestrians, cabs street cars, and the like, and that under the surface belongs the wire, the freight service, the hidden mechanisms of the municipali' ty. What he has accomplished for Chicago in the brief space of two years must be an ample demonstration to the growing and smaller cities of the West that mechanisms can safely SO under ground but not human traffic; that the people are entitled to the itreets, the mechanical things to what Is beneath. The trunk line tunnels and laterals of the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph company have been completed by Twelfth street Canal, Klnzle and the lake. The automatic telephone service of the company has already been lnaugerated by President Wheeler an active steps are being taken to have In operation within sixty days one mile of the electric freight traffic service for the wholesale and retail houses of the city's heart The engineering work for this telephone company, the work of building creating a doubt into a certainty, has been dona by Mr. Jackson at an expense of $5,000,000, and with a speed and thoroughness of work uoequaled in the engineering problems of the country. The underlying body base of Chicago, generally speaking, is blue clay. When the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph company presented to Mr. Jack-to- n its engineering problem, two years ago, it was to the effect that he should construct for their underground service and secret automatic telephone system a series of tunnels, being in the trunk lines 12.9 feet by 14 feet by .6 feet The feeder tunnels 6 fet by 7.6 feet The franchise rights of the company permitted it to construct hundreds of miles of such tunnels in the center of every street and alley in the city (Chicago has 4,000 miles of streets and alleys), but the corporation desired that the business heart, an area about one mile by one and one-ha- lt miles, should b immediately with tunnels forty feet below the surface of the streets, and not In their construction Interfering with the safety of a single building, skyscraper or other, In that territory. President Wheeler of the Telephone company said to Mr. Jackson: "We have the Ideas; we know how the telephone service of Chicago and Its freight service can be cared for underground. To carry out these ideas we need a waterproof ample sized, permanently endurable system of tunnels. We pay the bill, you dig." Other engiaeeis had said that Chicago's downtown district could not be tunneled without grave danger to the big bulldilngs; that conduit work on a large scale was Impossible, owing to the alleged weak character of Chicago's subsoil, her blue c!ay bed. Mr. Jackson had already In one feat bored his way through Pike's Peak. He also knew what underlay Chicago. He accepted the tun-aproposition tn September, 1901, g fifty- ot in-luri- Inconvenience. So careful was his work done that for his street lines he ran his surveys after 10 o'clock at night and before 5 in tht morning, thus avoiding all collision with traffic or errors growing from its presence. In his tunnels as he opened them he placed 900 tram cars running double-tracke- d e bn a out and his excavation thus got rail, as on new and his material rapidly Immen He who employed speedily. plicitly obeyed orders the orders to not Interfere with the public, to get the work done as fast as possible with perfect construction. He was eighteen feet below Lake Michigan and water never troubled blm. Ills tunnel walls were made with bottoms on the latteral and walls. In the trunk system he had walls. bottoms and When he had finished he said: "You can place the Auditorium c top of the tunnels and they will not bl disturbed. Nolslessly, speedily digging far for the convenience of future the first American city in th went on Jackson world, Mr. with the work which the public formally Inspected last week. He has given the big telephone company what It call ed for; what It Inspired. Comparing the street ruin and wreckage in New York and Boston involved in tunnel work, with Its absence in Chicago, he has accomplished wonders. He has not finished, for there are miles and miles of tunnel yet to be completed, tunnel that will eventually stretch to all parts of the city, but he has demonstrated In the most active of all world cities what an engineer can do who knows his calling. What Roebllng was to the Brooklyn bridge or De Lease ps was to the Suei canal, he has proven himself to be wltb the gigantic problem of getting Chicago's wires and Chicago's surface freight underground In avenues clean, so endurable that nothing short of an earthquake can damage them. As I said, he Is a plump man, of amiable countenance, a man who sleepr with a telephone by his bed when construction work Is on, a man who it dauntless and of the school of Industry courageous. I feel that this man as as engineer and practical builder has given the entire nation a wonderful and s maximum of practical accomplishment fourteen-lnch-gaug- 13-in- ch 10-in- 21-in- ch honey-bo- mbed 18-In- ch well-lighte- "Their divorce was rather unusual and unexpected, wasn't it?" "Yes, Indeed. 1 do not believe either of them had any notion of whom they would marry next time." York Times. it et , Snme Chicago burglars used an add test In order to take only real silver from a nous they had broken Into. |