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Jf AFOUL JfNjfW George B. Mi ta M //?J (CS. Nv* Copy RiGMTwi# t-w / Kpcmey CHAPTER IX—Continued. — l2 Upton is willing to give up the em erald jewel for Kynaston’s return, but hesitates to risk his life by going to the Mexican camp. At this point Dor othy takes a hand in the negotiations. Dorothy rose, pale-faced, her eyes alight with blue fire, like two tur quoises flame-backed. “Indeed, I shall take no further risk in this matter. You will go, father; you do owe it to him. I shall go with you, and we shall take the Bell.” Wilkes stared at her, uncertain whether he had heard aright. “You —you —you go? Not by a long shot, Miss Dorothy? Why, it'd be sheer murder—no less! Have you both lost your minds?” The girl’s lips were well-nigh color less; but Wilkes, who knew men, knew when he saw the tense lines in her faco that she had passed the dividing line between common sense and im pulse. “But how?” he asked. “How can you take the Bell —” “So that no one can detect it? Have no fear —wait.” She disappeared with the Bell into her own room. A moment later she returned, her face flushed with excite ment, her eyes luminous, standing, a veritable picture, in the golden square of sunlight that lay upon the floor. “Come!” she said imperiously to her father. “Come! We have no time to lose. You will keep these two men In safety till we return.” Wilkes gave up, muttering his dis content as he turned away, shaking his gray head. “Ain’t you got no sense, Upton? Don’t you know that what you plan is plumb madness? I’ve got a great mind to pull a gun on you an’ not let you go one step.” For answer Dorothy shook her head.- She would not betray her father be fore them all. What she knew must forever remain hid. “No,” she said again quickly; “he went for us and we owe it to him. Whatever shall be said of us, no man shall say that we Uptons do not pay our debts. I have the Bell where none can ever find it. Come, father!” Like a man in a dream, Upton fol lowed her out the door. The rest of the party morosely eyed the two as they walked down the hill, the girl golden-haired, trim-habited; the stur dy, square-shouldered figure of the miner plodding heavily at her side. Silently they passed down the slope; still speechless they crossed the ariojo beyond the alamos —the cottonwoods —where Wilkes and Manuel had made their capture that morning. As they approached the lines of the besiegers they were greeted with a yell from the outpost. Twenty men surged forward to seize them, but were swept back by an officer, who sprang forward, machete in one hand, his low-swung sombrero in the other. “Back, perros!” they heard him cry. “It is Senor Upton himself who desires speech with el general. Is it not so mi amigo?” Upton nodded carelessly. About the cook-fires one or two women moved lazily. The whole camp was asleep in the sunlight as Upton and Dorothy entered the house. For a second the two stood at gaze, the glare of the sun still blinding them. But when their eyes had become accustomed to the cool, darkened in terior Dorothy gasped and Upton swore softly. There before them, his arms tied at the elbows behind his back, stood Kynaston under charge of a guard of four men. Behind a table sat the blind priest, smiling quietly, and the squat-figured, bull-necked gen eral, who was in a furious rage. “And you dare to tell me that you do not know where it is, when the padre here says that he is sure you know its whereabouts?” Just then Upton stepped forward. “I have the Bell,” he said quietly. “If you let Kynaston go, as you prom ise, you get it; otherwise not.” “Ha-ha!” The general uttered a nasty laugh. “I’ll hold you till I get it, anyway.” He waved his hand care lessly in the direction of the young American. “Take him out and shoot him,” he ordered in an offhand way. “You bloody villain! You worse than dog—you wretched, yellow cur! You horse thief, rdbber, villain, ban dit, murderer! You conscienceless, perjured blackmailer! You dirty, double-crossing cheat! Snide! Crook! Grafter! Tin-horn!” Upton was blazing, raving mad angry. Despite the blood he had lo3t from the gunshot wound, his face was fiery red. The veins stood out, knot ted, on his head; his hands were gro ping furiously about his empty hol ster. "Is your word nothing?” he raved. “Here you promised to free Kynas.on If I gave you the Emerald Bell; I come down to arrange the details you seize tne and execute him, anyway. Have you no sense of honor —not even a mestizo’s?” Stunned by the very audacity of the man, who defied him even when know ing full well what tortures lay in store for the presumptuous, General Obispo stared open-mouthed at Upton, listen ing without offering a word in answer. But when the miner told him he was a double-dealer, and —what was worse —proved it, he came to life. “My word is sacred; not even a gringo can impugn my honor!” he yelled. The paradox would have been funny had it not been so serious. Obispo arose, his face twitching, his body positively shaking with anger. “Here, put a bullet in him some body!” he roared, pointing at Upton. Taking advantage of the diversion, Kynaston drew back, shaking off his guards. But in a moment they seized him by the elbows and threw him bodily out of the door. Upton, his fingers clenching and unclenching con vulsively, stood eying the furious half breed, while Dorothy laid a restrain ing hand upon her father’s arm. Before he could even respond to ttie loving pressure of her fingers a group of angry men rushed through the open door and threw her forcibly back against the wall. She fell to her knees. Staggering again to her feet, she was aware, as one in a dream, of a hideous, fury distorted face thrust within a foot of her father’s scornful countenance; of a dozen dirty, evil-smelling peon sol diers hanging to Upton as ants hang to a dying hornet. Then came a sharp crack and a spit of flame. She saw her father stagger back, sink, helplessly to his knees, and sag forward on his face in the center of the maddened group. A bare five seconds she stood there. Then the full meaning of the scene enacted under her eyes dawned upon her. She was about to scream, but a hand upon her lips mercifully stifled it. A strong arm drew her back through the open door, and she heard, still as if in a dream, a voice she had learned to know and love. Kynaston was speak ing brokenly: “Steady, Miss Dorothy! I know! My heaven, if I could only have fore seen this! Come quickly and make no noise. Use your breath only for run ning.” “But—Mr. Kynaston—daddy—my fa ther —” “No use, I tell you! They have killed him! Murderers! Just as they prob- “Stagger Back and Sink Forward In the Center of the Group!” ably killed others last night! Come, I say!” There was no withstanding his ap peal, for he had seized her hand and was fairly pulling her after him. Thus they began their race for the shelter ing trees in the bottom. Breathless, sobbing from the excitement and the speed, not knowing by what accident the way was clear for them, the girl hurried along with him, dry-eyed and staring, as one who has seen a sight preternaturally appalling. “You see”—he panted it out as they ran —“I tried to get word to you and could not. I feared you would attempt some such quixotic thing. They meant to kill me, of course. It would have been better so. Then when you came in I intended to anger the old scoun drel at me, and partly succeeded. Then when they threw me out my guard ran back and I sawed the raw hide that they had tied me with across an old wagon tire till I cut it through.” A sputter of rifle shots cut short his explanation. Pulling her to right and left to dis turb the aim of the Mexicans, he dashed through the cottonwoods and ran up the slope. Even before the door of the house could be opened to them, they were pounding on the frame. A second later they staggered into the room to face the gray-bearded ex deputy sheriff. “Where’s Upton?” he demanded truc ulently. “Where’s Upton?” Beyond a brief ncd he paid no at tention to Dorothy, nor even to Kynas ton. “He’s d-d-dead!” sobbed the girl, giving way at last. “Oh, Marian, he's dead! They have killed him! I shall never see him again!” The girl, sobbing as only a bereaved daughter can, flung herself into the waiting arms of Mrs. Fane. She drew the half-fainting girl into a bedroom, and so was not a witness of what followed. Had she remained in the living room, she would have seen a fierce old gray wolf of a plainsman open the front door and with all the politeness he was master of say to the two prisoners: "Now, caballeros. it is your turn. The way lies clear to General Obispo. Take it.” He pointed fiercely down the slope. The two men ran hastily for the open door. “Don’t!” said Kynaston hurriedly, laying a detaining hand on the old arm that swung from the rifle barrel up in the glinting sunlight. “You can’t do it in cold blood!” “There ain’t a drop of cold blood in any American who’s been in Mexico the past two years.” The magazine gate clicked a car tridge into the chamber and the nerv ous hand swung up the piece, the muzzle covering the fleeing figures. “There ain’t a drop of cold blood in any Anglo-Saxon who's seen women an’ little children shot down an’ four teen-year-old kids snatched from their homes to take a hand in their killin’ bees. Seventy-flve-yard law is what they’ll git! He’s got it now!” The rifle spat its mouthful of lead at the leading runner, who crumpled and rolled over as a shot rabbit rolls. The rearmost man —he of the artillery fame —stumbling over the body, gave Wilkes time to snap a second cartridge into the chamber. Just as the man rose to his knees the bullet caught him squarely in the back of the head, and he collapsed a second time —to rise no more. “An’ that’s a part of the debt paid,” growled the old man, his very beard quivering with rage. "The full debt ain’t never goin’ to be paid off, but anyhow there comes the third install ment!” Away down the hill, Kynaston, look ing over the wavering rifle-barrel, saw a figure come hesitatingly up the hill. He seized Wilkes by the ihoulder, preventing the old man from firing. “Don’t shoot,” he said quietlj “Don’t shoot. It’s the blind priest. Perhaps he brings us news.” CHAPTER X. The Blind Priest Halts. Very haltingly and slowly he came across the open, his long stick tap tapping his way among the loose rocks of the stream crossing; then up the hill slowly, as some wounded animal might crawl. In the Mexican camp silence had again fallen. Save for a few sporadic shot 3 and a shrill yell or two, the place lay quiet in the red-hot glare. Between the house and the alfalfa fields a few lone prairie dogs perched atop their burrows, basking in the sun glare "I wonder what he wants,” re marked Kynaston. “There’s bee<3 ne gotiations enough between us and that bunch of hell-cats yonder to end a var. Look at him, Wilkes.” “Aye, I’m lookin’. I’m wonderin’ if it’d be a lick or miss to plug him, too Wouldn’t hurt none at that, I reckon.” He fingered his rifle suggestively, but desisted when Kynaston shook his head. “Look! He's found the bodies.” The old padre paused abruptly as his stick struck soft flesh. They saw him kneel and reverently make the sign of the cross. Then, rising, he hurried haltingly toward the house. “Senores—senores'” they heard him cry. “Por l’amor de Dios —do no more violence! I bring you news.” “What news, ciego (blind one) ? Where is Senor Upton?” “Muerto (dead), senor.” The padre threw wide nis hands They saw his face working. “It was wicked, senor! It was wick ed beyond words. But vengeance is God’s. I am old, senores, who was once young, and I tel 1 you with the psalmist, ‘Never saw I the godly man forsaken nor the seed of the righteous begging his bread.’ Seek not to hu r ry God’s Justice. It has leaden feet, but it comes surely.” “I only hope it pleases him to send it by my hand,” growled Wilkes. "What is your news, padre? Speak quickly, for my trigger finger itches, if you did but know it.” “Shoot, then, if it pleases thee. As well die by thy bullet as work out my life slowly like a pack-mule in the tierra caliente of the south. Is that a woman's sobbing, senores?” “It is the senorita, she whose father was killed by the brandy-sodden fiend yonder. What Is it to thee?” “I would speak with her. After all, senores, I am a priest—a blind one, it is true; but I can still see well enough to point out to the unfortunate the only true path to peace.” Dorothy and Mrs. Fane came for ward, the girl still weeping but striv ing pluckily to repress her feeling. “Thou art welcome, father,” she said in the vernacular. "It is a house of grief thou comest to, but thou art wel come —doubly so for thy calling.” The old priest gently raised his hand with all the authority of two thousand years in his gesture: “Peace be to this house and to all the inhabitants there of. I will not trespass long, my daugh ter. Igo south again with my mission unfulfilled.” (TO BE CONTINUED.) Their Wedding Eve By HAROLD CARTER (Copyright. 1916, by W. G. Chapman.) Nina Suffitt sat in her bedroom and cried over a letter. It was nine in the evening. On the morrow she was to become the bride of an English nobleman. Viscount Addisleigh was a very estimable young man, very shy, and obviously half in love with her. But both had been dragooned into the marriage. The days had gone so fast since the engagement that Nina had had little time to regret. It was not until Jack Tremont’s letter came that the flood tide of memory came sweeping back on her. Five years ago they had been all but engaged. He was a poor artist then, and there had been a terrific scene when her stepmother learned of her friendship for the young man, and of the little suppers at Renti’s, where they had had such gay parties of young Bohemians. It had been a glimpse into the wonderful world for the girl, which closed down abruptly when she had not the strength to go her own way. She had not seen Jack since that last parting, when she had promised to write to him. And all that was five years ago. Her father’s death had followed. Her stepmother, a worldly woman, only wanted to get the girl off iter hands. She had been touted shame lessly in the foreign markets —that was the way with her set —and finally the viscount, with an impoverished es tate, had bargained for her. At least, not he, but the family lawyer. All had been very decorous, and — well, Nina was to marry him on the morrow. She read her lover’s letter again through blinding tears. It was only Her Heart Leaped as She Saw the Well-Remembered Figure. a little congratulatory note, saying that he was dining alone that night at the little table in Rentl’s, which they used to occupy, and that he would be remembering her. The house was very quiet. Every one had gone to bed early in anticipa tion of the exhausting events of the morrow. The girl peeped out of her room. How easy it would be to es cape for an hour or two, to fly to Jack, to spend one last short hour with him, before the drab life ahead of her be gan ! She trembled; and then, with those memories of the past, she could resist no longer. She slipped on an old dress and hat and coat, and softly made her way down the stairs. She shud dered as she saw the roses that had already been entwined along the ban isters, heralds of a joy that was never to be hers. Half an hour later she entered Renti’s. And her heart leaped as she saw the well-remembered figure, soli tary at the far table among the lights, in the midst of the gay crowd. And the years that were past seemed like a dream to her. He did not even start when she ap proached him, threw back her cloak and sat down facing him. “Nina, I dared dream that you would come to me,” he said. “I willed it with all my power.” “I had to come,” "answered the girl. “I could not start on my new life after I got your letter without letting you know —” “What?” he asked gravely. “That I loved you in the old days,” she answered. “I should not be say ing this, but my marriage is not of love, on either side.” “And you will go through with it?” “Yes,” she answered. He looked at her in approbation. “You never were a quitter, Nina,” he answered. They dined together. It was as merry as in the old days, for they re solved to banish ail care or re semblane* of the present evil from their hearts. And he told her of his success, and of his friends; some mar ried, one dead, one traveling abroad. After the meal_ he lit a cigarette and they sat closer together, heedless of the passage of time. “I am glad to have seen you, Nina,” he said at length. “We had a good time together. This will refresh my memory to carry it with me the rest of my days.” She looked at him inquiringly. “Do you mean to say, Jack, that you still care as much as that?” she asked in credulously. He nodded. “But it's all right, my dear,” he answered. “The time to fight was five years ago. I lost you then —I deserved to lose you.” She was thinking very hard. The incredible thought went through her mind that if she stayed here, if she just stayed with Jack, whom she loved, nothing could ever harm her, nobody would ever know. If she stayed— She glanced at the clock, and was horrified to see that it was midnight. She sprang to her feet in alarm. “I must go, Jack,” she said. He conducted her gravely from the restaurant. They were the last to leave. The yawning waiters watched them reproachfully as they went out. The street was brilliant with revolv ing signs. Crowds hurrying from the theaters blocked them. There came the sound of music from the restau rants, and the voices of the diners. “It was happy,” said Nina wistfully. “Yes,” he said. “I shall see you to your door, Nina.” She looked at him in alarm. “No!” she said. “I must go in softly, Jack. I must steal in. I can get on a car and then get off in front of the house.” He took her hands in his, and at the very last he lost his self-control. “Stay with me, Nina,” he whispered. “Stay! You have no one you care for. Be my wife. I can’t lose you now, Nina. Will you?” The temptation was terrible. She fought it down silently before she could answer. “Only Jack, that I never was a quit ter, as you said,” she answered. “It wouldn’t be honorable —that’s all.” He let her hands go, and she turned away. Then a newsboy came racing along the street. “Great fire!” he yelled. “All about the Suffitt fire!” The headlines made her reel. She snatched a paper from the boy's hand. The Suffit house was blazing. The fire engines were unable to control it. The entire block was threatened." There was no further word between them. She sprang on a car and Jack took his seat beside her. But many yards from the house the cars were blocked in the jam. The house was a blazing ruin. Men were searching within it vainly for her. Nina heard the words that passed among the crowd. “All safe but the bride!” “No chance of finding her now in that furnace!” “Poor thing, and on her marriage eve!” She reeled into Jack’s arms. Un recognized in the crowd, she fought out her problem. If she were dead — all would be well. The viscount, hon orably released, as herself, her cold hearted stepmother, hardly dis tressed — She clung to her escort's arm. “Jack, take me away!” she wept. “Take me away. I will go with you now. My past life lies buried —somewhere in there!” FOR BALL-BEARING PARTS Measuring Machine That Is Infinitely More Sensitive Than a Hu man Being. The average person has little con ception of the accuracy with which it is necessary to work on some classes of machinery. Ball-bearing parts, for instance, are produced in large quan tities, yet in some cases the limit of error is placed at one-tentli of one thousandth of an Inch or about one twentieth the thickness of a human hair. The human sense of touch is coarse in comparison. A multple indicator described in Popular Science is a very satisfactory device for measuring parts that must be accurately gauged without loss of time. The machine consists of a sub stantial base plate with an accurately ground, hardened steel facing and an integral standard carrying a measur ing appliance. The dial indicator reads in thousandths of an inch, each graduation representing a one-thou sandth inch movement of the indicator stem. The work to be measured is placed under the measuring point on the mul tiplying lever. As this is very near the fulcrum, a relatively slight mo tion will be changed to one of ten times that magnitude at the dial in dicator. If the work is but one-thou sandth inch larger or smaller than the Standard, the pointer of the indicator will move over ten graduations on»the dial. An error of one-tenth of a thou sandth will move the pointer one graduation. Pheasants Hear Zeppelins. A Zeppelin raid over the east coast of Scotland was announced in a curi ous manner by pheasants. At mid night a colony of young birds became extraordinary clamorous, the sound, it is said, resembling a long-drawn wall. An old man who knows all about pheasants was awakened out of his sleep by the noise, and remarked — “Something is gaun to happen.” A few minutes later the sound of burst ing bombs was heard, and the sky be came inflamed. It is of course, a fact of natural history that pheasants, like all hunted creatures, great and small, are peculiarly sensitive of hearing. gisillli get summer Sausage and Potted Meats / Just open and serve. f Excellent for sandwiches. your grocer Libby, M c Neill & Libby, Chicago imilllll THE HIGH QUALITY SEWING MACHINE NE\»ffQME NOT SOLO UNDER ANY OTHER NAME Write for free booklet “Points to be considered before purchasing a Sew ing; Machine.” Lea.n the facts. THE MEW HOME SEWING MACHINE CO..ORANGE,MASS. mi i mm STANDARD of EXCELLE NCE *». southern t, ; ,■ CHATTANOOGA BAKERY CHATTANOOGA . TENN SOUTH GEORGIA FARMS We own onr lands in Lowndes County, Georgia. one of the beJ't Counties In the State. U. 8. Gover ment reporta place our lands in tho center of the best Sea Island long fiber cotton district of the Bouth: Also In the best Paper Shell Pecan district. 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