worthless without you."

"Big Chief !" she murmured, as she
dropped her head on his shoulder, with
a happy sigh.

As he folded her in a tight embrace, he
said softly:

"The debt is paid !"



BEYOND



BY J. C. B. HEBBARD



Beyond I go : the trail is wide,
Clear to the Pass a long day's ride
To the other side.

I'm seeking gold that's over there ;
I've ridden far; the day is fair
There's time, Bay Mare.

We're getting near the mountain now;
It's nearly night! We've kept our vow-
To God we bow.



THE FOLLOW STORY



BY RAYMOND 8. HARRIS



CANADA IS THICK with popu-
lation along its southern border,
as though -the United States had
overflowed,, and so many men and
women been washed across the boundary
line. In some places the waves have run
but a little way to the northward, fronted
by rising land; in others they have crept
mile after mile through fruitful valley
and low-lying plain,, pushing the forest
backward upon the crest of the creeping
forefront of the flood.

Population, like water, does lie deepest
in the lowlands, but it is not altogether the
mountains of upper Canada that have kept
back farmer and factory alike. The snow
lies deep and long north from the great
grain fields and rich lands of the Domin-
ion's southern belt, and the adventurer
from the tempered Southland finds nature
there turned harsh and cruel. Perhaps,
for all she has given freely to mam the
best of her domains, yet she still reserves
for the lesser animals, no less her children,-
these wilder stretches, for here still roam
the dumb brutes man himself has dispos-
sessed in other places. And over even
this wilderness, hunters, insatiate, have
ranged in wide skirmish lines from the
points where their fellows huddle, and
slaughtered their brothers for the comfort
of those who sit by the hearth fire.

A successor of this victorious army of
death was John Halpin, agent for the
Western Fur Company, and employed in
finishing the work begun by the trappers
of long ago. Few are the fur-bearing ani-
mals that skulk through the great woods
now, but those by the hearth fires still
lust for their warm pelts, and still the gun
cracks and the bullet bites deep in the
Northern woods, while the furs men strip
from the quivering flesh and carry south-
ward, where the smoke of hearth fires rises
thick.

John Halpin lived in a cabin far out in



the vastoiess, there receiving furs from the
Indian and half-breed hunters, and trad-
ing with them in the name of his master,
the Company. Sometimes for weeks and
months no man came to pass words with
him, and through the long winter days
there was naught but silence, and the
silent snow, for companionship. Then
would come the hunters with their pelts,
a noisy bargain would be struck, and the
agent again was alone, storing the furs
for the trip soiithward.

Once each year, when the snow had
melted and run into the rivers, and the
roaring rivers had fallen to brawling
streams, men from the home office came,
gathered the furs, and went away with
them. John Halpin once each year left
his cabin in the woods and traveled day
after day with the pack horses and the
canoes southward to the outpost settle-
ments, and past them to the villages, and
finally to the great cities themselves.

Once each year he came, and took with
him back into the snow and the vastness
food for winter, and payment for the
hunter's kill.

But to John Halpin, most precious by
far among the treasures carried into the
winter by horseback and canoe, he took
away to the great silence the record of the
world since last he had come within ear-
distance of the noise of its shouting. Most
carefully guarded of all the possessions in
his train was the bundle of newspapers,
one for each day of the last year, that he
was bearing back to the cabin, and the
long winter days, and longer nights.

"Here they are again, John," the busy
little clerk had said, motioning toward the
lop-sided and yellowing stack of papers
leaning against a corner of the storeroom
behind the office. The pile was discolored
and dirty at the bottom, and graded in
lighter shades upward to the topmost
sheet, off the press but a few hours, ami



514



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



.fresh from the carrier's hands.

"Volume 17, eh, John?" the little clerk
said. "Volume 17, and I've never missed
a page of your novel, eh, John?"

"Nary a page, sir/' John Halpin an-
swered, running his hand lovingly along
the edge of the papers, and watching them
fall behind his touch in a swift change of
headlines and figures. "Last winter I had
'em better 'n if a boy brought ? em to the
door. One every night, and not a one
missing. Not a one missed in the whole
17 years. Here" he took out his knife
and slashed the thongs binding the bun-
dle he had brought in with him "these I
got on my own hook. Maybe you can get
something for 'em. I ai'ru't got no time
for to dicker with them fellers. And I'm
much obliged for the papers." His eyes
lighted eagerly as he viewed the disordered
stack, a musty bundle of old papers to
others, but pregnant to him with a year's
secrets, and he ran his hand over the pile
again, and straightened it up a bit, and
brushed off the dust settled along the
bulging sides.

All "this time he was makinig light of
the clerk's profuse thanks for the furs.
These were but in mute exchange for the
papers the little clerk laid away for him
in the storeroom day by day, and though
neither spoke of the bargain, it was under-
stood as if words had passed about it.
Sometimes in the winter Halpin thought
of the stack growing in the storeroom be-
hind the office, and in a panic of fear that
the clerk might tire of his bargain, or
think the gift of furs too small, he would
trap and hunt for days together in a
frenzy, and laugh and exult at every ani-
mal which fell to his gun, or fought and
died in the jaws of his traps.

Each day for seventeen) years the little
clerk had laid away a paper for the agent,
and for all that time, and one long winter
more. John Halpin had watched the for-
est from his cabin in the North. He had
appeared at the home office one summer
day, and been sent with the pack train to
his station. He had seemed eager to get
away, and never had expressed a desire to
be granted a respite from the long vigil.
The Company manager was good to steady
old John Halpin, and condoned the pres-
erve of his winter papers in the storeroom
corner.



One paper, and the record of the world
for that day ! One paper each day for all
the days during the past year he had spent
out of the world of men ! And each night
the paper to read and study by the candle-
light, just a jQar behind the world in its
chronicle. The world was unifolded to the
laborer in Montreal each day in its latest
changes : to John Halpin, the same record
became known each day also, but exactly a
year later.

Halpin unloaded the newspapers first
of all, when he reached his cabin, and car-
ried them inside ; one bundle, two bundles,
three bundles. Over in the accustomed
corner he placed them, and threw over
them the rubber covering that always pro-
tected the stack from the entrance of rain
or s'now.

That night, indeed, a storm came up,
and Halpin arose and placed the rubber
covering more securely around the papers,
for he heard the rain dripping on the floor
somewhere through a hole in the roof.

And the next eveninig, when supper had
been cleared, and his pipe lighted, he
switched the top paper from the pile,
cracked it open with a motion of enjoy-
ment, and tilted back against the side of
the fireplace, studying the news told there
in the light of the flickering candle, and
the leaping flames. It was the evening of
August 16, 1906. Halpin was reading the
"Montreal Express" of August 15, 1905.

One paper a day it was, and had been,
for seventeen years. In almost every one
of these many days, as the agent waited
for the hunters to come with dripping
pelts, and guarded those already gathered,
there were empty periods of idleness, that
would have passed in a plodding circle of
heavy-footed thoughts upon the days that
had been left behind in the world were it
not for the silent pile over in; the corner,
with its promise for the evening. The
memory of that former life revolved about
but a few incidents, and when the mind
went back across the forests and the moun-
tains to the life beyond them, into the
brain, one after another, came these same
memories of dead actions and fading pas-
sions. Across John Plalpin's brain, and
around hu a circle inside his head, these
thoughts always these same thoughts
trooped slowly, like convicts linked to-
gether in the lockstep, and crawling slow-



THE FOLLOW STORY.



515



ly. slowly, past the eye. John Halpin be-
lieved that they had worn a groove in his
brain, and sometimes he forced the pro-
cession to turn its stamping, plodding,
ever-moving feet off this beaten path, and
then, always, the line, slowly, to the same
slow, never-faltering time, turned into a
side path always the same side path
and went a short distance. Down: this the
line swung a little way, and then stopped
and spread into confusion, for here con-
jecture began, and useless pondering that
was worse than memory, because it was not
fixed, and could wander either into the
brightest places, or John Halpin reso-
lutely fixed his thoughts on the friendly
stack in the corner or into the pits where
humans grovel in less than life, yet do not
seek death, because they fear its threat.

And John Halpin was glad that the
papers were there, over in the corner like
a true friend waiting, and assuring him
that in the evening there would be a great
talk between the two of them. So that
sometimes the agent spoke to the stack,
and said: "I'll be here, all right, old
friend," and then was surprised that he
had spoken, when he heard the echo of the
words in the room.

Between the papers, silent in the cor-
ner, and silent John Halpin, an; under-
standing grew, so that the agent was on
his honor not to read more than the allotted
one paper a day. To the little clerk, too,
he owed the same duty, and a sense of
shame came over him, in the first winters,
as time dragged like a blocked wheel,
when the desire seized him to revel in the
papers, disregarding the bond between
them, and devour their stored knowledge
at one gesture. But the papers and John
Halpin niow were friends, and God, look-
ing down through the trees, saw that they
comforted each other, and He was pleased.

John Halpin cut away the fir branches
above his cabin that God might see the
plainer, and be sure how true was the tie
binding them, and that it never was
broken.

And when his pipe was lighted after
dinner, and the few dishes cleaned and
put away, John Halpin sat down by the
fireplace with his friend, the paper for
that day, and read in great, steady
draughts, like the thirsty traveler at the
desert well.



"Among the travelers is. Marian Halpin
of this city/'

The agent ran through the line and was
reading further; then he stopped with a
jerk and read it through again.

"God!"

Marion Halpin. He spelled the two
words over, while his fingers crumpled the
paper where he held it.

"Among the passengers . . . Marion
Halpin." Swiftly he worked his way
down the article, head swinging to and
fro as he mastered each line, eyes close
to the shaking sheet.

"Miss Halpin is a beautiful young musi-
cian, and the daughter of the late Mrs.
John Halpin, whose death occurred only
last year. Her many friends in this city
are frantic, far neivs of the popular young
icoma-n, but all that is known of her is that
she took passage on the ill-fated train from
Chicago for this city. That she, or any
of the passengers is yet alive seems hardly
possible. Even prominent railroad offi-
cials express no hope of saving the en-
tombed travelers"

Even before reaching the names, Hal-
pin had read the story of the wreck with
unusual interest how the tunnel had
caved at either end as the big Express
Limited thundered through along the sod-
den tracks. The engine and a portion of
the mail car was protruding at one end of
the tunnel, but they were crushed in heaps
of scrap. The earth slid at the lower en-
trance after the last car had whirled into
the tunnel, and it was believed that, even
though the coaches were but stalled in be-
tween the two landslides, death to the
scores of passengers imprisoned there was
only a matter of minutes, for the air in
the close-sealed dunigeon soon would be-
come exhausted.

Halpin read the story again and again,
still dazed, still unable to comprehend.
It was only after he had pored over the ar-
ticle many times, and looked through the
paper mechanically for further news of
the catastrophe that he turned back and
saw that the telegraphed story really came
from his home town).

"Denver, Colorado," he repeated. "Yes
it's Denver."

He read down the article once more,
moving nearer the fire, and repeating each



516



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



word of the long account aloud. The last
line he mumbled over and over again be-
fore finally it penetrated to his conscious-
ness :

Cf By to-morrow the fate of the passen-
gers will l)e known without doubt defin-
itely."

Suddenly his head jerked erect, and he
sprang toward the pile of newspapers loll-
ing in the corner.

"Marion ! My little girl !"

John Halpin raised his head, and gazed
around the cabin, dully. The fire burned
quietly, and shadows leaped in and out
along the walls. His blank stare fell, and
under him, with the tarpaulin drawn
around and over it, lay the crazily leaning
stack of newspapers. Halpin drew a deep
breath, and looked at them long, but
vacantly. Then gradually a fire kindled
in his eyes, and his hand sank slowly un-
til the fingers closed around one corner of
the rubber covering. After that the fin-
gers released their hold, the hand raised as
slowly as it had descended, and the agent
moved heavily toward the fire, and sank
into his accustomed chair.

He had left the papers untouched.

And after the chill night had passed,
the morning sun came up through a red
mist, rose above it, and threw a cardinal
shaft against the dreary window, and the

flory of it fell upon the bowed head of
. ohn Halpin, still crouching over the dead
fire, with fingers working, and dry lips
moving noiselessly. Ever and again, his
slow glance lifted and stole stealthily to
the yellow, toppling stack of- "newspapers,
covered with the tarpaulin, and set off in
a corner.

When the sun had mounted high the
agent arose and shuffied over to the. pile
of papers, looking about him with watch-
ful eyes. But all he did was to pat the
tarpaulin more securely about the pile,
and then raise his hands and with a cry
rush out into the woods and over rock and
bush in a frenzy. The sun had turned
to cardinal again, and sunk behind a red
mist, when the agent's head peered in the
cabin doorway, watching carefully, and
then was swiftly withdrawn. Again it ap-
peared, with close shut, peering eyes, and
this time the agent suddenly uprose, and



walked into the cabin with an assured
tread, almost a pompous one. With a
great air of assumed carelessness, he pre-
pared his evening meal, now and again
stealing a glance at the pile of papers
sneering in the corner, estimating the ef-
fect of his demeanor upon them. Slowly
he lighted his pipe and smoke poured from
it in great clouds. Lumberingly he set
-himself into motion, walked over to the
stack, and threw back the rubber cover-
ing. Then he dropped to his knees on the
floor as the headline at the top of a column
leaped up to meet his eyes. He was read-
ing down the column as he pulled the paper
unheeding from the stack, and he contin-
ued to read, absorbedly, as he worked his
way over into the circle of brighter light,
still on his knees. By the time he was
near the fire the story had been finished.

"Hope for the Express Limited passen-
gers !

Voices or cries for aid, mingled with
shrieks of suffering, had been heard by
the frantic rescuers, digging their way in-
to the caved tunnel. It was evident that
cracks or rifts ini the earth aided, per-
haps, by the ventilating pipe running
along the roof of the tunnel, admitted air
to the imprisoned passengers. But could
the trapped men and women live until res-
cue reached them? Was it not probable
that another slide would bury them be-
neath tons of rock and earth, or at least
close up the apertures through which air
now reached them?

A late telegraph bulletin, received just
before the paper went to press, announced
that the midnight shift of rescuers had
distinguished plainly cries and moans from
within. Without doubt some of the pas-
sengers had been spared.

Who were they?

John Halpin moaned and tossed the
paper from him, and bowed his face in his
hands. An 'hour later he picked the sheet
up carefully a'nd straightened it out with
painstaking effort, smoothing out every
succeeding wrinkle made by his shaking
hands, patting it here and there with the
gentle air of a child dressing its doll. He
read the story again, and a dozen times.
There was fiio mention in it of Marion Hal-



pm



That night the agent went out into the



THE FOLLOW STORY.



517



storeroom where the furs were kept and
got a heavy rope. He bound the stack of
papers round and round with the cord,
and tied the knots securely. Then he
crouched beside the pile, and guarded it
until morning.

Again the red sun pierced the tree tops
and Halpin moved around in his cabin,
preparing breakfast. He did not look at
the papers now of his own volition, but
now and again) turned red, inflamed eyes
toward the stack, stopping in his work for
minutes at a time and gazing at the
papers there, not seeing them. But this
he did not know.

Then his feet caught in the paper he
had read the night before, and held him
bound for a moment, and Halpin stooped
and doubled the sheet into a ball, and
tore it into shreds, while he cursed the
yellow stack bowing mockingly in the cor-
ner, and threw out wild hands at it. He
stamped on the scattered bits of paper,
gibbering in a frenzy, and rushed out of
the cabin to grovel and weep upon the
ground.

A moment later his haggard face was
peering in through the cabin^s grimy
window, to where the stack hugged itself
in the corner, leering back insolently.
Through the window all day the unkempt
face stared. Sometimes the spectre with-
out cursed, and shook its fists at the
emptiness within. Again it grasped the
window ledge with clenched hands, and
shook as though the thing were fighting
with itself for restraint. A soft rain fell
sometime in the unreckoned hours of the
afternoon, and the spectre dumbly wiped
the mist from the pane as it ran down
in blurred streams, and ever peered with-
in.

A murder had been committed in Mon-
treal the year before, and the telling of it
crowded the story of the wreck from the
front page of John Halpin's paper, and
down into a corner of am inside sheet.
The agent found it there, but when at
last his agonized gaze fell upon it, the
sweat of the fear that it had not appeared
at all was dripping from his forehead.

"They're cuttin' off the story about it/'
moaned John Halpin as he scanned col-
umn after column in the search. "I've
seen it on every story, and they're doin'
the same with mine with the story of my



little girl. It's gettin' littler every day,
and I want to know more and more every
day more and more !"

The express and baggage cars had been
uncovered, and gangs of men were dig-
ging further. Within a short time the
first passenger coach would be reached.
Many had been killed in this car, it was
feared, but now and again; a cry still could
be heard, faint, to be sure, but very near.
The gang uncovering the lower end of
the tunnel had not encountered the rear
car as yet, but they too could hear shrieks
and groans. Before morning the impris-
oned passengers would be reached, and
trains carrying nurses, physicians and
emergency supplies were waiting near the
scene of the wreck to care for the sur-
vivors.

Following the story was a late despatch
announcing that the end of one passenger
coach had been reached, and the dead bod-
ies of two men and a woman taken out.
Many moaning cries now could be heard,
some of them the agent's hands trembled
urjtil the paper rattled and creased some
of the voices clearly were those of women!

John Halpin sat quiet, with bowed head
the paper he had been reading held in
his drooping hand and you might have
thought, had you come upon him then,
that he was sleeping. But when his head
raised slowly, you would have known, by
the suffering lined upon his face, that he
had not slept, and could not.

"It's all right/"' said John Halpin, ris-
ing slowly to his feet with an effort. "I
know I have read my evenin' paper." He
motioned with his hand around the cabin,
as though some on<e was there. "I've read
it, I know." Then he raised his voice
until it filled all the space between the four
walls.

"But if I transgress, I do it knowingly,
and I make it a matter between God and
me. I ain't never took two papers before
since I made it up to keep myself down
to one. One a day, I promised, cause it
was the best for me, and I ain't never
broke my word. But now I go straight to
God about it, havin' explained to Him
about my little girl, and He won't judge
me harsh."

The agent raised his hands above him,
and let them fall on his breast. So he
stood for a moment, and them advanced



518 OVERLAND MONTHLY.

with firm step to the pile of newspapers, from the stack in an armful and fell

lifted the tarpaulin with a gesture, and heavily to the floor with them tightly

gently laid it aside. Then he gave a great clasped to his breast.

cry, and tore the top paper from the stack, For one day the little clerk in the depot

and glanced over it in wild haste, and tore at Montreal had neglected his systematic

a dozen) successive sheets from the pile work.

and pulled them into strips as his eyes One page of John Halpin's novel was

raced through them, and he scooped them missing.



THE IDLE RICH



BY THE CALIPH



Be rich, and live in wearying ease,
Be snobbish, and on bended knees
Fawn to those simple fools who would,
Have it distinctly understood
That they are of our race, the best,
And you and I are but the rest.

Not much,
For such,

Aro paltry parasites whose curse

Is ended only by the hearse,

Which carries them to mould and stink,

The same as those from whom they shrink.

Fine raiment and a languid air

Count nothing in a coffin bare.

They rot,
Forgot.

A grinning skull, is this the end?

Of blase fools who would pretend

To be while here of purer blood;

Though they're but animated mud.

The same as you and I to-day.

It is to laugh, and so I say,

The while,
We smile.

They're not so useless as they seem,
They have a place in Nature's scheme,
In them we see what comes to pass
When some low-browed egregious ass
Secures an automatic hold
Upon a glittering pot of gold.

And so,
We know.



THE GHOST OF MOHAMMED DIN



BY C. ASHTON SMITH



I'LL WAGEK a hundred rupees that
you won't stay there over-night,"
said Nicholson.

It was late in the afternoon, and
we were seated oui the veranda of my
friend's bungalow in the Begum suburb
at Hyderabad. Our conversation had
turned to ghosts, on which subject I was,
at the time, rather skeptical, and Nichol-
son, after relating a number of blood-
curdling stories, had finished by remark-
ing that a nearby house, which was said
to be haunted, would give me an excellent
chance to put the matter to the test.

"Done !" I answered, laughing.

"It's no joking matter/' said my friend,
seriously. "However, if you really wish
to encounter the ghost, I can easily secure
you the necessary permission. The house,
a six-roomed bungalow, owned by one Yus-
suf Ali Borah, is tenanted only by the
spirit who appears to regard it as his ex-
clusive property.

"Two years ago it was occupied by a
Moslem merchant named Mohammed Din,
and his family and servants. One morn-
ing they found the merchant dead
stabbed through the heart, and no trace
of his murderer, whose identity still re-
mains unrevealed.

"Mohammed Din's people left, and the
place was let to a Parsee up from Bombay
on business. He vacated the premises
abruptly about midnight, and told a wild
tale the next morning of having encoun;-
tered a number of disembodied spirits, de-
scribing the chief one as Mohammed Din.

"Several other people took the place in