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Show f yf 224 cjumitHf ta.o or Trie nucctii co I 8YN0P3IS. Iilllp Oaylay, acrued of a rrlm of which he la nut (tullly. resign from the army In diaKTace and hi affection for hi friar.3, l.leut. Perry Hunter, turn to hatrad. Cay ley aeek solitude, whera he lerfecta a flyln machine. While aoartiis; over the, Arctic reKloiia. ha pick up 4-uriotiRly shaped atlck ha had een In the aanaaMln'a hand. Mmmtlnc attain, lia discover dis-cover a yacht anchored In tha bay. Ie-acandlng Ie-acandlng nnr (ha (trainer, lin meat a alrl on an lea rtoa. H It-am that th trlrl'a name la Jeanne Fielding: and that 1ha yacht haa roma nnrth to seek slsn of her father. Captain r'leldln:. an an tic explorer. A party from tha yacht la making ma-king aearch aahnre. After Ca-ylcy depart Jaanna find that ha had dropped a cu-rloualy-ahaped atlck. Captain l'laack and tha aurvlvlna rraw of hi wrecked whalar ara In hiding on tha cnaat. A slant ruf-men ruf-men named Koacoe. hud murdered Kleldlna; and hi two companion, after tha -plorar had revealed tha location of an anormoua ledfte of pure gold. llocna than took rommand of the party. It develop that tha ruffian had committed tha niur-dar niur-dar wltneMod by Caylay. Itoacoa plana to capture tha yacht and eacapa with a bl load of irnlf. Jeanne tell Kanxhaw, owner of tha yacht, about the vllt of tha ky-man and how him the atlck left b '"aylay. l-aniihaw declare that It I an Kaklmo throwing atlck, ued to ahoot dart. Tom Kanahaw return from tha Marchlnr party with a apralned ankla. Perry Hunter la found murdered and llaylay la accuaad of the crime but Jeanne balevae him Innocent. A relief party e to And the aeamhar. Turn confaaa hi loe for Jaanna. Hha mw aahore and ntera an abandoned hut CHAPTER VII. Continued. ' Th night of k might well hare rauiiod aatonlahment or alarm In the (Irl'a mind. Hut It was neither alarm nor aatonlahmcnt that hor next art xpreaaed. She dropped down on hpr katfn balde the rude wooden bunk, drew the cheat up close In the tight embrace of her young armH, laid lii cheek agalnat the cold polUhed aur-face aur-face of Its blackened wood, and cried. Kvery queHtlon that nilKht have Mkcd Itself how the thing could have come there, and what Its coining might protend to herself or to the other of the Aurora's people wan wept away In a sudden rush of filial affection and regret which the sight of It Instantly awoke. It had reached ber with that sudden poignant stnb of memory which Inanimate objects, familiar by Ions association, seem to be more potent to call up than the ery persons of the friendH with whom they are associated. The sight of her father himself could hardly have had o Instantaneous and overwhelming an effect upon her as the sight of this old chest, which was one of the earliest earli-est of her associations w ith him. It bad always stood, until he bad taken it with him on that last oyage of his, upon certain farther corner of his desk In the old library. It was one of those objects of a class that :hlldren always love smooth, pol .shod, beautiful; beautiful and. at the ame time, defying curiosity. It wa quite a masterpiece of cabinet cabi-net work. No hinges were visible, and the cover fitted so closely ujKn , the box Inself that the line which ( separated them was hard to discover. A.nd there was no trace of keyhole or lock. To those uninitiated Into Its , secret. It defied any attempt to j ( open It. i Presently she seated herRelf on the bunk, took the little chest on her knnea and set about opening It. lie t tween the cold and her excitement she found this rather a dimcult thing to j i do, though her mind never, nevei hesitated over the slightest detail ol the necessary formula of procedure She knew In Just what order to presi In those Innocent looking little oma mental tacks In the brass binding; re membered the right moment to turr the box up on Its end and let the Just released ateel ball roll down Iti channel to the pocket, where It must lie before the last pressure upon th last spring would prove effective. She no nioro faltered over It than she would have faltered over her alphabet And at last, when her numbed fingers fin-gers had completed their tank, the counter-weighted lid rose slowly by Itself, just as It had used to, ami revealed re-vealed to her swimming eyes the contents con-tents of the Interior. I'p to the moment she had not realized real-ized what the finding of the dispatch box meant. It had not occurred to hor that a full account of her father's expedition, a narrative which would reach, perhaps, to the morning of the last day of all. was lying lere, right under her eyes. Hut now w hen the cover opened and she saw beneath it a thick volume, bound In red morocco, she realized that here, under her hand, was the very object, in search of which the Aurora had set out upon ber perilous voyage. The first sight of her father's clear, erect, precise handwriting warmed her with a sudden courage. Hut even this new Inspiration of courage did not make her strong enough to turn back and read the last entry to that tragic Journal first. She tried to do it, but the will failed her. So she began be-gan at the beginning. Once she had plunged Into the fascinating narrative, narra-tive, the whole of the outside world faded away from her. She w as oblivious to tho fact that the darknexs outsldn wan no longer tho mere darkness of the fog; oblivious to the rising wind that poured its Icy stream through the leaky wsIIb of the hut and inndo the candle flicker; oblivious, even to the very sound which she had meant to wuit for the sound of Tom's voice calling out to her from the yacht, and the Hound of other, more alarming, nearer voices. They all fell on deaf ears as he turned page after page of that precious pre-cious record of her father's life. It was written. In the main, In the scientific, scien-tific, observant, unlmpassioned temper which she knew so well. He chronicled chron-icled those days of peril, when their ship, crushed In the Ice, and only kept from sinking by that very Ice, which had Just destroyed her, was drifting along In tho 'pack, to what seemed certain destruction, as quietly and as explicitly aa he did the uneventful voyage through Hehrlng strait. The man's courage was so deeply elemental element-al In him that he could not be self-conscious self-conscious about it. He told of the land, the strange, uncharted un-charted shore, whose discovery offer-fd offer-fd them a respite, at least, from that Jetttructlon; told how he got his remaining re-maining stores ashore and built the lut, where. In all human probability, iO and hla companions were to spend ho rest of their lives. Finally she reached the record of he day when be had consigned to the the very morLrg when ltomoe. had murdered bliu. Its discover would go a long way toward bridging the gap which KuNCoe meant to leave In their departing trail. In short. If (hat rosewood box were left behind, Hos-coe Hos-coe would always feel that he was In more or lens dange r of detection. And he didn't mean to have a thing like that hanging over Mm. Consequently, when ho discovered that the box was not on board, and that his particular Injunctions concerning con-cerning It hud been either neglected or disobeyed, he came raging up on deck again, a inont formidable figure, which caused his companions, hardened harden-ed ruffians though they were, to cower and shrink awav from htm. In a torrent of furious blasphemy, he demanded to know why that box had not been brought aboard; ami the concentrated lets of bis rage he emptied at last upon the two men whom he had ordered to do It. "Now," he concluded, when the torrent tor-rent had spent Itself, "you gn nutiore, you two. Yes, you, Carlson I mean you and you. Hose; k imhore now and get It." Then, after a momentary silence, he raged out the command again, amid a foul flood of abuse. Hut stIU they made no move to obey, and the big Swede. In evident terror, answered him. "I won't get It, Koscoe. If you want that box, you can get It yourself." "What In hell do you mean?" the leader stormed Hut his voice, even aK he spoke, lost Its confident tang of authority. "You tell him," said Carlson, nodding nod-ding to his compnnlon, Hose. Evidently Evident-ly It was Itose who had told the story to the other members of the party. He was a niuut!y built mail with a stubborn stub-born Jaw, nud I'liiiiik, In the days of bis command, had always dlxllkcd him us that most umlchlralilit pest that can be found in a forecastle u sen lawyer. law-yer. "What ddl you leave the box In the hut for?" tiu demanded. "Ho might not have come back If you had left It In the cave." "Come buck!" echoed Koscoe, with a growl. "That's what I said. We went to. the hut to get It, and there was a light Inside, and there ho sat, Just like he used to. And he had the box open " "He! Who do you mean?" There wus no trace of trurulence In Roscoe's voice now. He sMike as though his throat was dry. ' "It waa Captain Fielding; him to the life. And, yet. It was different from the way he used to be. We couldn't see It very well. Us face was sideways and the light was behind It, and It looked smaller and thinner-more thinner-more more like a woman. (If !os had bad the word 'spiritual' In his vocabulary, vo-cabulary, he would have used It. In default of It, he gave up trying to t'Xpress Just what he meant.) Anyway, Any-way, there he sat with the box open IjoHldc Mm, and that red hook of his pM-n on bis knees. Co back for It? Well, I guess not." '1 here was a momentary silence aft-r aft-r he had finished, and Koscon could eel It. as It stretched Itself out to the ength of half a minute or so, the chill f their terror enveloping hiiu. To throw It off, he blustered, stormed at and abused them for a pack of liar. Hut In the end he sprang down into one of the boats, and said he would fetch the box himself. Whether b believed their story, or not. It was the only thing for Mm to do. As he pulled shoreward he tried hard to convince himself that he did not believe It; that Rose and Carlson had probably forgotten all about the box, and had trumped up the story to avoid tho necessity of going back for It. He beached his boat, scrambled ashore and set out walking doggedly along In the direction of the hut. The fog was still all but Impenetrable, even to his practised vision, but he knew the shore like the palm of bis hand, and he trudged on without a pause, until he was within ten paces, per-haps, per-haps, of his destination. Hut there he faltered and stopped, turned about, under an Irresistible Impulse Im-pulse of fear, and would have fled had not sheer necessity compelled him to stop again. There was a light, a diffused yellow glow, faint but un-I un-I mlstakale, shining out of the windows j of the hut. He knew he could not go back to the Aurora without that (mix; It was necessary both to his future safety and his present command of the situation. Ills one hold upon those sullen followers follow-ers of hla depended upon his being Impervious Im-pervious alike to terror and to defeat. If he were to go back now without accomplishing his purpose. It would only be a question of days before they murdered him. They all hated him. enough for that, ho knew. Yet, even under that necessity, It wax three or four minutes before, at the command of his burly will, he began be-gan creeping forward on hands and knees toward tho lighted window of the hut. And when hn reached a point where he could command its Interior, his knees slipped out from under him and he lay prone upon the Icy beach, his face buried In his outstretched arms. For . those two sailors had told the truth. , Presently he drew himself up and squatted back on his haunches, staring. star-ing. Human or not, the tgnr there - . In the but seemed unaware of bis presence. It was staring at .the expiring ex-piring flame of the candle In profound abstraction. When It stirred, as presently pres-ently It did. It was with a natural, human motion. And then the candle wept, out. In the few seconds of silence which followed, his terror returned upon Mm with full force. Hut It went away as suddenly as It bad come, and with lu recession there surged up In Mm a wave of brutish anger. It was no ghost I hut had sat In contemplation contempla-tion over the contents of that box. for.lt was moving now, with human footsteps faltering, uncertain footsteps, foot-steps, at that. And when It appeared. Just visible and no more, outside the doorway, It culled aloud In a human voice a woman's voice. (TO UK CONTINl'Kn ) Circumstantial Evidence. "Ho suys that he thought all day yesterday that It wan Saturday " ' Iki you think he really did?" "I guess so, he took, 5 bah," ' sea tho bottle containing the chart of the coast and the account of his plight, together w ith the course which the relief ship must take, should such a relief ship bo sent out. to have any hope at all of reaching them. "I suppose," his narrative for this day concluded, "there Is hardly one chance In ten thousand that my message mes-sage will ever be picked up, and certainly cer-tainly not one In a million that It will be found In time to bring an effective relief. However, it helps to keep the others cheerful, and that Is the main At the close of the day's entry was a single Hue which contracted her heart with a sharp spasm of pain. "This Is Jeanne's birthday," It said. She resumed her reading presently, and came to the point where the Walrus Wal-rus people entered Into the narrative; their plight, their rescue and their welcome by the three men. who by now were the only survivors of the original expedition. She was reading faster now, with none of thoae little meditative pauses that had marked her progress through tho earlier pages of the Journal, for the sinister termination of the narrative narra-tive began to foreshadow lUelf darkly, dark-ly, from the moment the first moment mo-ment of the appearance of the Walrus people on Uie scene. Her father's description de-scription of the man Iloscoe, of the expression that had been plain to read In his face as he had listened to the account of the gold bearing ledge across the glacier, gave her a shuddering shudder-ing premonition; apparently, her father fa-ther had experienced the same feeling himself. Day after day Roscoe's name appeared, always accompanied by some little phase of misgiving. For Just one day this dread seemed to have been lifted from Captain Fielding's Field-ing's spirit. That was the day tho sun came back to them, putting an end to their long arctic night. "It has been a hard winter," he wrote, "and I ara glad It Is over. The hardest thing about It has been our sleeplessness, from which we have all suffered. Today To-day we have enjoyed a change, having taken a walk along the beach. Even Koscoe seems humanized a little by a return of the frank sunshine, and may, perhaps, develop into a tolerable companion. com-panion. Tomorrow I have pmrnlsc jai if It is fine, to guide them across the glacier to the gold ledge." It was the next to the last entry In the Journal. She turned the page, paled and pressed her Hps tight together to-gether when the array of blank pages before her told her that she had reached the end. Then she read the last words her father bad ever written. writ-ten. "Took the Walrus peoplo to the ledge today. Have no heart to describe de-scribe the scene that they enacted there. The man Koscoe certainly means to kill me. If it were not for my conviction that the danger from him Is largely personal to myself, that he means me and no other, probably, for his victim, I think I should have him shot as a meusure of Justifiable i prevention. Ho Is not a man, but a i great sinister brute literally sinister, for he Is left-handed. I shall walk i warily, and hope the crisis may soon be over." Evidently that part of bis ( wish had come true. f The book slipped out of the girl s , hands, and she sat, with horror-widen-cd eyes, staring at the candle, until It , guttered and went out. Slowly, the r outside world began to take Its place j, again around her. She knew that she R was shivering, half frozen, that the Icy , wind was whining through the cracks j. In her rude shelter. t She thought she heard some one moving about outside, and that thought brought her quickly to her f reel. She made her way to the door ' f the hut. called out; waited a breath-less breath-less Instant and cried aloud in sud 1-n terror. r CHAPTER, VIII. Ir Ir Apparitions. ( Koscoe did not pause to Investigate I" he effect of his blow, nor to waste a P1 iccond one. If the man who had con-ronted con-ronted Mm there In the companion t ay was dead, so much the better. If " i were only hair-dead, the Job could e finished at any time. Ho was out if the way for the present at le8Bt. d toscoe hurried on. searching state oom. and passageways and finally ho crew's quarters, forward w When he had satlfied himself that I" e and hU men were In undisputed obsession of the yacht, he rmeru. d ki n dock again by the forward batch br ay. and found Captain Planck al sn i-ady there. He directed him to go Tl elow with Sthwart. who had been b. ngineer aboard the whaler, and get ei f am up as promptly as possible. He ro Imself remained on derk. directing st ie unloading and stowage of thou by reclous golden slabs that the rest ro r the party were bring out In boats ab Tim the shore. roi "We've got It all. Roscoe. unless you th. ant them barrels of wbals olU" an an In the last boat sang out as they su ime alongside. tin "We'll leave them to pay for this ml ckal plated ship." Roecoe answered, pe Um: Look ally and get aboard, tnc 'Tl be ready to start as soon as ws th in get a Htm daylight." h He looked m over, aumbered Jot them as If they had been so many heep, noted that they were all here, except poor Miguel; plant k and Schwartx were down tolling at the boilers. "Stuy here till I come back," he commanded. "I'm going below to see that everything's stowed all right. When I come back I want to talk to you." He disappeared down the aHer hatchway, switched on a light and indulged in-dulged In a long, satisfied look at the great masses or precious metal which were stacked, according to his directions, direc-tions, In the strongroom. His purpose In coming down here was threefold. He meBlit to see that tho gold was stored correctly and he meant to lock the room up, so thut Its precious contents would not be tampered tam-pered with, and bring the key away with Mm. He was not afraid that any or his crew would try to steal It, but he thought the moral effect of having It linked away where It was Inaccessible Inacces-sible to them, and or his keeping the keytn bis own possession, would bo a help In maintaining his prestige as commander. They knew the sea better bet-ter than he did. Just as he knew the nature or gold bearing rock. It was necessary to do something to bolster up hla position as chief of the party and keep It above dispute. He did not want to have to kill any or them yet. The Aurora would be short handed enough as It was. Hut there was oito more reason ror that hurried trip to the strongroom. He wanted to be sure that a certain rosewood box hud come aboard along with the treasure and what few stores they were taking away with them. That littlo box had occupied much of his leisure since the day when he had murdered the owner of It. He had sometimes wished that when It came into Mh hands that day ho had yielded yield-ed to his first Imptilso to shatter It, for tho thing had alwuys mocked him coquetted with him. He had often seen It lying open on Captain Fielding's tabl In the tiny walled off cubby hole of a room they rolled the captain's cabin, while the captain hlmseir was writing up his Journal or working upon bis charts. Ie had, during that first winter, frequently fre-quently thought of trying to open It, should the opportunity offer Itself. After the murder, when lie took that little room for his own quarters, he found the box and preserved It with the Idea that now, at least, he would get the better of It. He knew what Its contents were well enough Captain Cap-tain Fielding's charts and Journal, nfld he had no curiosity concerning them. Hut the secret mechanism of the box itself tantalized Mm; and hn meant some day to solve it. Once he had done so, he would kick the thing to pieces and destroy Its contents. That was all there was to It at first, but during the next winter, when the long night kept them prisoners In their narrow quarters, the mystery of that littlo rosewood box took on an added Importance to him and to Ihe others, out of all proportion to any r'ffert which the solution it It could have. One by one, with the r-xceptlon r the Portuguese, they tried. Hour ifter hour they labored with It, and In-arlably In-arlably they failed. 1 Tho rest of them gave It up, and 1 heir admitted defeat gave Koscoe an-ther an-ther Incentive for solving the thing ilmself, for he meant to leave no tone unturned to convince them that hey were rools nnd weaklings; that e, Roscoe, was the only man among hem. Such a conviction was neces- ary to Ms leadership It was toward the -nd or that win r that the Portuguese made a sug estlon destined to bear fruit. "It's curse that has sealed up that box," e said. "You cant open It, and If on break It. the curse will kill you." He evidently believed Implicitly this theory, for no persuasion could iduce him to touch the box himself, radually the othtrs had shown, by ttle Involuntary acts, shrinking and lances, that Miguel's belief was In ctlng them. Sometimes, after a long iccession of sleepless. I ghtless days, oscoe round hlmstir believing It. too. id regarding that little box as tne aled up casket or the murder he bad ne upon the owner of It. The crime as tiiere Innlde. To overcome that feeling, he had orked all the harder trying to solve i secret. Ills Interewt. now, however. In ma-ng ma-ng sure that the box had really been ought aboard the Aurora was not iperstitlous. but wholly practical 1c;- were leaving most of their stores ihlnd tberu, as there was no time 'ber to transport them to the An ra or to destroy them With th.se -urea and with the shelter afforded the hut and the little clump of sur- -undlng out buildings, It was prob- le that some member of the An- 3 ra's party, at least, would survive e winter. If a relief ship should live the next summer, or even the mmer thereafter. It would probably d soma one on this desolate shore io could tell the story of the dlsap-armnce dlsap-armnce of the Aurora and form a "" or less definite surmise as to cause of It. That rosewood bog 4 Captain Fielding's Jooraal la It a maJ that bad bca wrtttea up t c Neither Alert Nar Astonishment The Her Neat At C peeve jeprir f it V t - """"" lwul,- la a Lena. Satisfied Leek, |