day with lively hostility that he aspired to become not a pharmacist but a Parnassian, and that he was willing to abandon the pestle for the lyre, and the austere pleasures of the laboratory for those of the cabaret platform. Still more serious was the rumor that Gaston Secrétan composed little couplets and epigrams in which the established régime was satirized. The family promptly placed this kind of behavior under surveillance

The patrons of the shop looked with surprise upon this tall boy for whom Cannabis indica and Papaver officinalis stood chiefly for harmonious hemistiches of Latin verse, and who did them the unforeseen honor, while they were waiting for their prescriptions, of submitting to their criticism his last topical quatrains. They were surprised to find, on the back of their prescriptions, lines of unequal length in which the Republic and the stoutness of President Fallières were amusingly lampooned. But they did not conceal the fear that this lyre-bearing prescriptionist inspired in them, and the terror in which they lived of seeing him, in a moment of poetic abstraction, substitute potassium cyanide for bicarbonate of soda.

They communicated their fears to the right person. Father Secrétan tried to put the brakes on these inclinations of his son's, which seemed to him at once regrettable and dangerous. But he was not a fool, and when he saw the success that his son achieved in the salons of friends, where he put on very amusing little revues, and learned that he was celebrated in the goguettes where he went to practise on the sly, he allowed the young Gaston to set sail for another port. It was no longer the period when the Chat Noir was unique, and ten cabarets disputed for the beginner. In a few months the exprescriptionist had built up his public

and made for himself a remarkable place in the ranks of the Montmartre satirists one more whom a muse of the artistic and literary cabarets has attracted and has supported, and who has made for himself on the boards a position which the pharmacy would probably never have given him.

Fursy, who is the best known, no doubt, of contemporary chansonniers, came to the topical song by the most direct route that of journalism. For

on La France·

at the time when Émile de Girardin's paper was still at the height of its popularity-Fursy played several different rôles, and even — in a masterly way - that of a parliamentary reporter and political leaderwriter. At the age of twenty-four, after a few months' probation in the press galleries, Fursy had attained a success that aroused the jealously of the veterans. His reports, his 'echoes,' his gossip, disturbed the tranquil plodding of the old men of the road who were his confrères.

As for the politicians, he had become their nightmare. No one knew so well as he did how to extort from a leader, even from the President of the Council, one of those indiscreet speeches that raise a general hue and cry on the day after the paper has come out, and start passionate discussions. He was already, without intending to be, one of the entertainers of the parliamentary Grand Guignol. The rulers of that period, from whom he wrested interviews between two doors, on a staircase, or on the sidewalk of the Quai d'Orsay, never dared to leave the Cabinet-room without casting anxious glances around. The secretaries and undersecretaries, the chiefs and the subordinates of the Cabinet, and the numerous attachés, kept a vigilant guard about the chief in vain. With the boldness of youth and the skill of a housebreaker, Fursy would penetrate

'EXCUSE me, mates, got to kill a man at half-past five.'

With this unusual explanation of his haste, the old man almost fell into the railway carriage as the Portsmouth-toWaterloo express pulled out of the station. He stood, swaying his great bulk easily to the movement of the train, while he hoisted his bag into the rack; then he lowered himself into his seat, and seemed, almost at once, to fall into an uneasy doze.

The two young officers, who preceded him by a moment, stared at him, startled, nonplussed, almost openmouthed. They were exceedingly young officers and very new at their job, and they were already just a little flurried by finding themselves in a third-class carriage. Officers travel first-class!

'A queer customer,' Second-Lieutenant Phillips remarked.

'Said he was going to kill a man,' Davidson of the same rank replied. "Think we ought to do anything about it?'

'Chaffing you, that's what he was.' The pretty little actress in the corner pulled her furs more closely about her. 'Don't you get the wind up! It was just his little joke.'

"Think so? One might make an ass of one's self if one tried to interfere.' Davidson contemplated the improbable with courage. 'Best to lie low,' he said. 'All the same, I'd like to know what lingo that is he's talking to himself. Just listen a minute,' Phillips said. 1 From the Empire Review (London public-affairs monthly), October

Three occupants of the carriage were silent. The old man's head had fallen forward on his chest. In guttural words that burred thickly on his tongue, he muttered to himself while he slept. "That's not English,' Davidson averred.

'Nor French. I,' Second-Lieutenant Phillips explained, 'took a prize for French at school.'

'One ought to be careful in these days. Not let the signing of the peace treaties lull us into false security, eh, what!' Lieutenant Davidson felt for his budding moustache, and two pairs of nice blue eyes bulged slightly as they rested on the gnarled face opposite them.

'We must remember,' Phillips added, 'that this train comes from one of England's chief naval ports.'

'You keep on remembering it,' the little actress advised. 'Don't you take your mind off it for one moment, or it'll be all U P with the British Navy.' She gave Phillips a little nod of her dainty head, pulled her hat a trifle more to one side, crossed her legs, showing conspicuously a pretty ankle in a darned silk stocking, and settled down to her novel.

The train rattled its way across the southern counties that lay half-veiled under wisps of mist. The old man sat so immobile, so withdrawn, as to appear almost inhuman in the fading light. Every now and then, with a thick sound of soft gutturals he muttered to himself.

The mist came into the carriage. Something else came into the carriage,

too. An atmosphere? A feeling? A portent? Or the sound of the sands of a man's life falling, falling, to stop at half-past five? The actress moved uneasily and shivered. Second-Lieutenant Phillips broke nervously into unnecessary words.

'Be a bit thick by the time we get to London,' he remarked. 'Fog, you know, and all that.'

The actress glanced out of the window. 'My luck's out if there's a fog,' she said. 'I've just finished playing panto, in the provinces. Got a chance of a West End show. I'll miss it if this old creepy-crawly does the slow-motion stunt.'

'Dirrty weather, and there's a dirrty night comin'.' The old man lifted his head; for a moment he appeared to wake to full consciousness of his surroundings. His small gray eyes looked appraisingly from face to face; then a film like the film of the fog seemed to creep over them again. 'Ess sure, a dirrty night for them that lies off a lee shore. A lee shore and no soundings.' His voice trailed away, his eyes closed, his head jerked with the jerk of the train. Once more he muttered in a strange and guttural tongue. Once more he seemed to withdraw into an isolation utterly mysterious to his fellow travelers.

Strange, outlandish, foreign, he looked this huge hulk of a man, gnarled and weather-beaten, with his vast mahogany-colored face, the features twisted and scarred, the little eyes deep-sunken, gleaming queerly beneath overhanging brows where gray hairs, thick as bristles, stuck out at unexpected angles. His long upper lip, clean-shaven, was shut closely over the strong but stained teeth. He wore a rough suit of dark-blue cloth, old and shabby, and over it a thick, short overcoat of the same color. His high bowler hat was on the rack. His grizzled hair

was close-cropped upon his massive head.

The old man sat, bent forward a little, with a hand on either knee. Such hands! All a man's life-history in their scarred and tattooed breadth. Strong hands still, with a growth of dark hair on their backs; hands that still would find it easy to crush and kill. On the right a butterfly was tattooed with widespread blue wings, and on the left lay pictured a serpent's head, the body coiling its length about the wrist and disappearing up the sleeve.

'A queer customer' was the verdict written on the faces of the officers as they stared at him. But the eyes of the actress rested on him with admiration. 'When that was young,' she said to herself, 'my holy godfathers, it must have been a man!'

'I'd give a week's pay to know what that language is he talks to himself,' Phillips said suddenly.

'I don't see its any business of ours,' Davidson replied.

'I'm with you there, old dear,' the actress chipped in, ‘though I've a sort of feeling I might give a guess myself if I was given time and to spare.'

"The safety of the country is everyone's business,' Phillips said; 'and,' he added, 'I've no doubt you learned German at school.'

'Oh, give it a rest.' The ankle was uncrossed with an impatient fling! 'We've heard a bit too much of that sort of bilge. I'll take my Bible oath England is n't in any sort of danger from that.' She nodded toward the heavy head that dropped lower and lower. Her brown curls danced under her soft brown hat.

The fog thickened. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. London was only some thirty miles away. The train gave a jolt as it passed over the points of Woking junction. The old man awoke.

'Dirrty weather! A lee shore and no-' He pulled himself together, a look of caution crept into his eyes. 'What was I saying, mates?'

'Only passing a remark about the weather,' the girl told him.

"That all?' The old man seemed relieved. 'I forgets myself sometimes. No one ought n't to go talking about their private affairs in a railway carriage, mates.'

'You're right there, old dear,' the actress agreed. 'It's not a thing I should think of doing myself.'

'You must excuse of me, talking like that. I'm a ole man. A ole man what's seen a deal of life in ees time.' He seemed to be getting drowsy again. 'Ess, a deal o' life.' Suddenly he straightened his great form: 'Lived,' he said, clearly and loudly, 'lived to see ole England go to the dogs.'

Phillips bristled. 'England is a very great and victorious country, sir.'

'Eh! What! What's that you're saying? Ess, ess,' the old man raised his head again. 'Dogs,' he said, 'Jewish dogs. That's what I tell you.' Again his mind seemed to wander. 'A lee shore,' he muttered, 'an' a thick night o' fog.'

The actress bent forward a little and smiled at him. 'I know who'll be on a lee shore if we're late getting into Waterloo,' she said cheerfully, 'and that's this child.'

The old man turned toward her. A gleam in his eye and a slight gesture of his whole body acknowledged that he was speaking to a woman, and she young. 'You in a hurry?' he asked. 'Sure, train would hurry up if her knowed. There's none of us won't crowd on a bit of sail to please a purty maid. I'm hoping myself 't won't be so very long before we gets in. I've got a appointment, I 'ave. A appointment at half-past five.'

He rose as he spoke. The great bulk

VOL. 588-NO. 4258

of him bent low in the carriage. He took his shabby black bag from the rack, and sat down with the bag on his knees. His hands fumbled as he opened it. He took out a flask of spirits and a large old-fashioned revolver. He set the revolver down very carefully on the seat by his side and unscrewed the top of the flask. The smell of brandy floated on the air.

"Ave a drink, mates,' the old man offered. "T is good stuff for a dirrty night!'

Both the officers refused. He filled the cup of the flask and tossed off a great draught with a nod of his head toward the pretty actress. The neat spirit seemed to wake him up.

'A good drink, and a good gun, mates,' he said, and, picking up the revolver, he handled it caressingly, drawing his great thumb down the metal polished by many a hand-grip. 'This ole gun's killed many a man in its time.'

'Killed men, has it?' The actress spoke with light, half-amused interest, while the two young officers stared at the old weapon with fascinated gaze.

'Ess, to be sure! More 'n one, up there in Chiney when I was a young boy. They with their pigtails! And a white man gone native on the Barbary coast. Wanted killing, he did! And blacks and cannibals in them islands off Australey. And a sight of others more than I can bring to mind these days. A man o' my years can't keep tally o' every man he's killed. Stands to reason, mates.' The gray eyes shot а hostile look around the carriage as if their owner expected to be asked to account, then and there, for the number of his slain.

'Off Australia, that's the Pacific Islands! I've always heard there was a lot of German influence there,' Phillips said.

'Oh, give it a rest, you and your influ