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Show B Aged Elbert Osrstalrs. cnpltaliat. ensrrsngrd from M bis wlfa in hi" olrt for t10 companlonbip H Of bl daughter Mary, who lives with Mrs. Carstalrs at Huniton-ou-tbe-Hudaon. Tln child refuses to conic and visit blm. Mrs. Carstalrs refuse to force her to do no. and. bonce olil Carstalrs engages tarry Varney to tnke the Carstalrs yacht op the Hudson j. and kidnap Mary, who Varney believes is but 12. Varney pets the belp of Peter Maginnls In the Ten-turc. Ten-turc. Three days after the start la made. On tbo way op the river" the name of the yacht, Cyprlnnl. Is H erased to throw mrter off the track. Arriving at Ilunston the two ally themselves with Ilaro, n eam- H palgncr tot refnrni against tho dictatorship of Bom Ryan. Ryan so completely dominates tbo town that I I the reform pplc are denied the use of pithily balls. Vome Is accused by Coilgny Smith, owner of tba H Gaaette, which is uoder Ryan'a thumb, of being fl Ferris Stanhope, antbor of pink ln literature, and Ik advlaed to leave town uuless bo wants trouble. H The same evening Varney freeing from a heavy raln- ttonn takes shelter In a cottage and flDda a etrango B young wouian there. FIFTH IXSTA T.LM HXT. Larry Meets Mary, y ARXKY called reassuringly Into the gloom: "I sincerely beg your par-" par-" don for bursting in like that. I had no idea there was any one There was a second's pause. " N no," said the pretty voice, hcsltat-lngly. hcsltat-lngly. " You you couldn't of course." " But please tell me at once," he said, puzzled by this " have I taken the un-forgivable un-forgivable liberty of breaking into your house?" "My house?" And he caught something like bewildered relief in her voice. "Why I was thinking that I had broken into Varney laughed, his back against the door. -' If It were, I'm sure I should be able to offer you a light, at the least If it were yours, now that I stop to think well, per-haps per-haps it would be a little eccentric for you L to be sitting there in your parlor in the inky To this there came no reply. "I suppose you. like me," he continued, courteously, "are an unlucky wayfarer who had to choose hastily between tres-passing tres-passing and being drowned." Inevitably he found himself wondering what this lady who shared his stolen refuge could be like. That she was a lady her voice left no doubt. His eye strained off into the ethiopian darkness, but could make neither heads nor tails of it. "Voices always go by contraries." ho thought. " She's 52 and wears glasses." Aloud he said: "But please tell me quite frankly am I intruding?" " Not at all," said the lady, only that and H nothing more. " Perhaps, then, you won't object if I find a seat? Leaning against a door Is so dull, don't you think?" BHV He groped forward, hands outstretched before him, stumbled against the stairway which he sought, and sat down uncom-fortably uncom-fortably on the next to the bottom step. Then suddenly the oddness of his situation rushed over him, and, vexed though he was with the chain of needless clrcum-stances clrcum-stances which had brought him into it, ho fl with difficulty repressed a laugh. HI m J An hour ago he had been lounging at -8 peace upon the yacht, looking forward to nothing more titillating than bed at the j earliest respectable hour. Now he was sit-W sit-W ting with a strange lady of uncertain age in an unlighted cottage on a lonely coun-1 coun-1 M try road, while a howling thunderstorm raved outside, imprisoning him for nobody could say how long. In tho interval be-H be-H 2 tween these two extremes, he had discov- H ercd that he was a " double," been threat- LwAbI ened with violence, hopelessly lost Peter, B 11 and found Mary Carstalrs. Surely and in H 9 truth a pretty active hour's work! On the tin roof of tho cottage tho rain brat a wild tattoo. Within, the silence aB ;thened. Under the circumstances Var- '.;JM H considered reserve on the lady's part H 9 unnatural; but a little talk, as he H -a wed tin- matter, would tend to help the I yWj ary evening through. ;H I Ho cleared his throat for due notice and . I guii with a laiiKh. '.ill "I was industriously chasing two men m Hom town when the storm caught mo. You '.gjj Bnow what I mean not drumming them :Znm MUt 0i the Clty' but rnerc',y Pursuing them In this general direction. I wonder If by Hany chance ou happened to pass them on 1 " N-no, I believe not." H " A very .tsmall man, very well dressed, H and a very large man, very badly dressed, JJ wearing a kind of curious, rococo straw hat. H ; i know," he mused, " that you could not H i,ave forgotten that hat. Once seen " JBH "O!" she exclaimed, with sudden evl-H evl-H fH fences of interest "do tell me, Is the 1 t jiTi.i Hor man you mention Mr. Hare?" H He Is. indeed," ho answered, surprised. -Hon know him? O. yes certainly Hunston " "Know him!" said she, in tones of hardly suppressed indignation. " It is he who is responsible for my being caught in this this annoying predicament." At something In tho way tho lady said that Varney unconsciously chipped twenty years off her ago and conceded that she might be no more than 32. "I'm soi ry to hear that," he said, with a laugh. " T should say that Mr. Haro has already had quite enough troubles for one night." V " O then y o u" r have 6een him this m evening.' n I had the pleas- A urc of meeting him on tho square not half an hour ago " Each waited for the other to say more; and it was the lady who yielded. She wenton hesitatingly, hesi-tatingly, yet somehow some-how as if she were not unwilling to Justify Jus-tify herself to this stranger In the curious cu-rious position i n which she found herself. " It is very strange and unlike him," Bhe said, doubtfully. "He was to call for me at a quarter past 7 and take me home. I was at the seam stress', perhaps a , quarter of a mile up the road. I wnitrf "Til hot." said he, "that not a minute after you turned into shelter they raced by here after you. Now they're kicking their heels at tho sowing lady's, probably soaked through, and wild to know if you got homo safely. O, he's being punished for his sins, never fear." " I am sorry for your friend." her voice replied. "And I believe that I forgive Mr. Hare now that I know what detained him. I think I must have heard them gn by just after I got In. Once I was sure I heard voices, but, of course, I was expecting Mr. Hare to bo alone." .-. . thumbnail sketches " ' made you look like a ,t.v I H Hr this." M s . ' lilt v : ( V . ,v,,. ....... stirring woodwork, for all the world like a living thing; and tho laxly again said " O! " And after that she said: " Tou are not In this room, are you?" " I'm sitting quietly on tho stops digging around for matches," ho said. "Would you prefer to have me come In there?" " Would you mind ? Not that I'm In the least frightened, but " " It will give m great pleasure to come faithfully searching my pockets as I grope forward. Thus," he said laughing, " I must grope only with my head and feet, which is a slightly dangerous thing to do. Ouch' Where are you, please?" " Here " " ' Here ' Is not very definite, you know. I have nothing to steor by but my ear. Would you mind talking a good deal for a while? " ' It Is not often," she said, with further ?igns of a thawing in her manner, " that a woman gets an Invitation like that." "Opportunity knocks at your door, golden, gold-en, novel, and unique." i " The luck of it Is that I can't think of anything to say. Would you care to have me hum something? " Off eamo the lady's glasses, never to be donned again In fancy nr in life, and Varney Var-ney was ready to admit that there might be ladles In Hunston who were worse looking look-ing than she by far. In the Stygian blackness black-ness ho collided with a chair and paused, leaning upon tho back of It. " I'd like extremely to have you hum. From your voice, I I'm sure that you do it div awfully well. But since you seem to leave it to mo, I'd honestly rather have you do something else." " Yes?" Larry laughed. " It's a game. A an evening pastime a sort of novel guessing contest. Played by strangers in the dark. You see I must tell you that ever since you first spoke my mind has been giving me little thumbnail sketches each one dlf ferent from the last of what you look like." She said nothing to this; so ho laughed again. " O, it's not mere curiosity, you know. It's purely a scientific matter with me. Tho science of deduction. The voice, you know, . tells little or nothing. I may say that I have made something of a study of voices, and have discovered that they always go by contraries. For this reason," he laughed a gayly. "when you first spnko, I but perhaps per-haps I am simply tiring you?" There was a small pausp, and then the lady spoko, with apparent reluctance; " I am not tired." Varney smiled into tho great darkness. "Well, when I first heard your voice ha, ha! I made up my mind that you could not possibly be less than 52." Ho was rewarded with a faint laugh; this time there could bo no doubt of it. " You remember that mythological tunnel tun-nel where everybody went In old and eamo out young. This conversation has been like that. Since we havo talked," said Varnoy, " I have knocked thirty years off your ago. But much remains to be told and that L tho game. Are you dark? " " Are you punning? " " This is no punning matter," he said, and began his third exploration of himself for a match. And above them the water continued to thud upon the roof like a horrent hor-rent broken out of a dam. " This Is too bad! " breathed the lady impatiently, im-patiently, and plainly she was not speaking to Varney. " I believe it's coming down harder and harder every minute! " " Yes," he answered, cheerfully, " the good old rain is at it in and waited and then O, what was that, do you know?" " Only this old floor cracking. Don't flatter flat-ter It by noticing. How odd to find, meeting meet-ing in this way. that we are both searching search-ing for the same man. Isn't it? " " 11 seems to me odder that ho is not searching for mo." She was sitting, so he Judged from the Bound, about fifteen feet away. There w is coldness in her voice as she spoko of tho candidate. Varney felt sorry for that young man when be next held converse 'with her. From her voice he had also gathered that tho dark rather frightened her, and that the presence of an unknown man had not allayed her uneasiness; though something of her reserve had vanished, ho thought. hcn she found that the intruder knew Mr. Hare. " O, but he was is," ho cried encouragingly. encourag-ingly. " I'm positive that he's searching for you at this minute Why, of course certainly. That would explain the whole thing." Sitting damply on tho dark 6talrway, he told of J. Pinckney Hare's evidently impromptu im-promptu experiences in tho public square, which had undoubtedly knocked from his mind all memory of his engagement at the seamstress"; and of tho sudden recollection of it. whioh, there could be no question, was what had sent him and his new friend bursting out of the houso and tearing for dear life up tho road. " Ha' " thought Varney. " A Hunston romance! ro-mance! " "You don't know Maginnls," he answered gloomily. " Nobody in the world ever stays alone long when Maginnls can possibly possi-bly get to him." He heard something that he thought might bo a faint laugh. And immediately ten years more came off the lady's age and she stood at 22. The young man began to consider with less distaste his obvious duty of tseorting her home. In the momentary silence, wood somewhere some-where near them onco more creaked loudly and scarily. " O: " eamo her voice out of the black ness. " Would you mind striking a match and seeing if there isn't a lamp or something some-thing we could Hght7 " " Eut I haven't a match that's Just It! If I had I Why I assure you I've been wishing for nothing so much as a light ever slnco you over since I came In " " If I were a man " she began, vexedly, but suddenly checked herself. " Are you quite sure you haven't a single one? " " I'll gladly look again in all my twenty-seven twenty-seven pockets. I've been doing It ever since I arrived, and I've gotten rather to like It. But I'm awfully afraid it's a wild goose chase." Crack! Crock! went tho mysteriously earnest. We're probably fixed for hours and hours. I might argue, you know that I havem right to know these things. The box of matches I Just gave away like a madman would have told me and no questions asked. Matches and lamps you have none, but such a 8 you have " " Could you not talk of something else, please?" Varney laughed. " Certainly. 1 f I 1 must. Only I've been rather gener- I ous about this, I think, showing you my hand and giving giv-ing you the chanco to laugh at me. You see, for all I know you may be i 52. after all. Or , even 62 O. glory' ! Hallelujah!" " What on earth is the matter?" " O, nothing! I Nothing at all! Just I have found a match. That's all!" "A match! Splendid'" Splen-did'" sho cried, and her voice suddenly seemed to come from a higher point in the darkness, as though she had risen. Just one' O, we you must be extremely careful with it " " Tho trouble Is." he said with exaggerated exagger-ated dejection, " It's pretty wet. I don't know whether it will strike or not." " You must make it strike. O, it will be unpardonable if you don't make It strike' " " Then I'll throw my soul into tho work. I'll concentrate my whole will power upon it. On the back of this chair here shall I?" . "All right. I'll concentrate, too. Are you ready? " " Re ady it is," said Varney Gently he drew the match across the rough wood of the chair back, his ear all eager expectancy and nothing happened. Thrlce he did this fruitless thing, and something some-thing told him that a largo part of the sul-philr sul-philr had been rubbed away into eternity. " It's nip and tuck," he breathed, stifling an impulse to laugh. "Nip and tuck!" Pressing the match's diminished head firmly against the wood, he drew it downward down-ward vigorously and long. Thoro was a faint crackle, a llttlo splutter, and glory of glories! a tiny flame faltered out Into the darkness. " O be careful ' " Varney cupped his hand about the little flare, and for a moment ceased to breathe Theh it caught more fully, and it was evident evi-dent to both that the victory was won. He had meant to look instantly about for lamp or candle to light, but If all his futuro happiness had hinged upon It. It seemed to him that he could not have helped ono glance at the lady who shared that shelter 9 and that match with him. jtk She stood a few feet away, regarding him breathlessly, hatted, gloved, one hand resting rest-ing lightly on the center tablo, one folded about the crook of a dainty draggled para- soL Tho match threw a small and ghostly aW light, but he saw her, and she wore no veil. " Why why I" W " O, quick' There's a lamp Just behind you." W I He caught himself with a ctart. By in- m credible luck a lamp was at his elbow; as It 1 was tho match died on tho wick. He put back the chimney and shade, turned up tho I wick, and the room was bathed in golden J light. It was a good sized room, evidently newly furrbhtl and as neat as a bandbox. The empty bookcase on which the lamp rested Ti as r,f handsome quartered oak, which transiently tran-siently struck him as curious. But in the next Instant ho turned away and forgot all about it Tho lady stood whero she had risen and was regarding him without a word. Tho lamplight fell full upon her. He came nearer, near-er, and his waning assurance shook him ' like a pennant in tho wind and was suddenly sud-denly gone. The sense of camaraderie which the dark had given faded; his easy friendliness friendli-ness left him; and he was an embarrassed young man face to face with a girl whose sudden beauty seemed to overwhelm him with tho knowledge that he did not so much as know her name. " None of my thumbnail sketches," he faltered, " made you look like this." ," - She had rested hor wet parasol against the table, where a slow pool gathered at the ferrule, and was pulling on more trimly her long white gloves. Now she looked at him rather quizzically, although her young eyes reflected something of his own unsteadylng embarrassment. " No," she said, " I shall not be 62 for for some time yet. But of course It was a game a pastime where I had a little tho advantage. Do you know, I I am not entirely en-tirely surprised, after all." "O, aren't you-" he said, completely mystified, mys-tified, but as charmed by her smile as he was by the subtle change In her manner which had come with the lighting of that match. " And it was nice of you to tell me that pollto story at the beginning," she said. "And quick and clever. When I heard tne J front door burst open, the first thing I ''i t thought of, really, was that it must bo you." " I can't think," ho said, unable to take his yes off her. " what in tho world you are talking about." She laughed with something of nn effort, and sat down exquisitely in a cruel Cine chair. " Well, then do you forgive me for taking possession of your house like this? You will, won't you? I can't be silly, now, and pretend not to know you. But really I never dreamed that you " " Is It possible." he broke in stormily, " that you are mistaking me for that in sufferable Stanhope? " She looked at him, startled, dumfounded. in her eyes amazement mingled with embarrassment; em-barrassment; then her brow wrinkled Into a slow, doubtful smile. " O O I beg your pardon' I didn't un derstand But Is it my fault that Ie seen your picture a hundred times? Yes, I suppose sup-pose it Is; for, at the risk of making you crosser still, I'll confess that I I cut it out and framed It ' ' Varney leaned his elbow on the mantel and faced her. " You have made a mistake," he said. " I am not Mr. Stanhope " " You mean," sho laughed, very pretty and pink, " that it Is no affair of mine that you are." A kind of desperation seized him. It was evident that she did not believe him. Just as Coligny Smith had not believed him, and the plump young woman of the grocery who had used his Christian name. He was almost al-most ready not to believe himself. However, How-ever, there were cards in his pockot; he got one of them out and, coming nearer, handed it to her. " My name is Laurence Varney," ho said, mechanically, for that slogan seomed fated to meet skeptics everywhere. " I am from New York, and havo happened to come up here on a friend's yacht to to spend a few days. You have made a mistake " She took tho oard, held It lightly in her gloved hand, bowed to him with mocking H courtesy. " I am very glad to meet you Mr. Lau- H rence Varney! I I am from New York, H too, and have happened to come up hero on the New York Central with my mother to H spend a few years. And I live in a white I house half a mile down tho road, where I ought to havo been an hour ago. And I am Mary Carstalrs, who has read all your books I and think that they O " Sho broke off all at once, for there was no missing the H look in his fa.stounded face. "What in the world have I said now? " - I " You can't be Mary Carstalrs!" he " la that bo terrible? " she laughed, a little I uncertainly. To be continued. H (Copyright by SuaU. Maynanl & Co.) aaa I |