Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

848 ce No.” “There was a Red Cap patrol in the office whilst tha wert gone. There’s doings, and the corporal of the guard is like to lose his stripes. The old swett that keeps the coal yard is gone, too, they say, leaving his door open and a herring on the hob. If thou seest aught of either trying to coom in the gate, thou ’rt to hold them. Dost tha know them?” ‘“‘T know the old scrounger who kept the coal yard.” “T’other is a little, dark-skinned chap.” A memory stirred in Morgan, and the face of the batman flashed before him. ‘““ Oh, yes. An officer’s batman.” ‘Aye. Perhaps thou’lt hear more. Good luck to tha.” - After the other had clattered up the stairs to the dining hall, Morgan wondered about the lady who had asked for him. But he knew the ponderous humor of his comrades, and he recognized this as one of the standard jokes. He promptly forgot it when a pair of girls between the ages of eight and eleven, instead of running away when he warned them to get off the hay, led him a chase around and around it. When he caught them he walked toward the road with one gigeling and kicking child under each arm, and set them over the iron rail. Almost at his elbow a voice said, “ Sir, for a long time I have wish’ to thank you. You have sav’ my life.” He whirled and looked into a pair of lu- minous gray eyes, very light gray, flecked with minute streaks of black. They were widely set in a small face that tapered delicately to a fine chin. A winning, haunt- ing smile curved the lips. She wore black, a simple, broad hat, and a cape which she held wrapped about her by laying her crossed hands on her breast in a curiously nun-like gesture. Her hands were slender, bare, and candidly white. On one sparkled a diamond, set in platinum. It was an exquisite, exotic figure, more foreign to England and Woolwich than the dark-skinned turbaned rajah in whose honor Saturday’s games had been given. And more, it was the ghost, the figure He was in the clink with me. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, that had been seen standing by the garrison church at midnight, and in the gun park at two in the morning. It was the woman for whose sake he had turned the adju- tant’s car into the stone wall, and who had disappeared completely from the face of the earth after the accident. “T have surprise’ you,” she said with a thrush-like break in her low voice. “ You cannot speak? No?” lowly his heart settled to a more nor- mal beat, and he raised his hand in salute. Bitter experience had taught him that a soldier must be a soldier first, and two more children were tumbling in the hay. If the garrison sergeant-major should see him standing in converse with a woman while young vandals romped in the ten shillings’ worth of hay that lay behind him, he would lose his freedom for the rest of the day, and he wanted that freedom more now than ever before. The red climbed slowly into his cheeks, and from there to his forehead. “Tt am sorry,” he said. “I have—my duty. This afternoon at two I shall be free, and if—” “Tf it is to save the nation that you must chase the children, I will excuse you,” she said with a delicious laugh. ‘‘ Perhaps, later, I shall walk out with a soldier, like a servant maid? Yes, I shall do worse things before I die. I shall meet you on this road where it runs into the Champs de Mars where you performe’ so excellently yester- day. Go!” With the scarlet flooding his face and even his hands, Morgan turned and pursued the two imps about the hay pile. He heard a low chuckle, and shame almost over- whelmed him. When he had captured them and set them outside the rail the woman was gone, but far up the white road by the gun park he saw her small dark figure. She was walking slowly, keeping the middle of the road, apparently unconscious of the curious glances cast at her by the passers-by. At a bend in the road she dis- appeared under the shade of a pair of elm trees, and Morgan went back to his post by the gate. ‘‘ Ah!” he said with a sudden shock, for it had come to him suddenly that her ap- - Oo Conmmcooolxs (CO)