ad
and speaking out of the side of his mouth, addressed a short, squat,
dark man in private's uniform almost directly behind him at the end of
the second file.

"Pal," he said, casting his voice over his shoulder, "did you happen to
read in the paper this morning that the police commissioner--the new
one, the one that was appointed while we were in France--would be in the
reviewing stand to-day?"

"No, I didn't read it; but wot of it?" answered the person addressed.

"Nothing, only it reminded me of a promise I made you that night down at
the Stuffed Owl when we met for the first time since we were kids
together. Remember that promise, don't you?"

"Can't say I do."

"I told you that some day I'd get you with the goods on you and that I'd
lead you in broad daylight up the street to the big chief. Well, to-day,
kid, I make good on that promise. The big chief's waiting for us up
yonder in the reviewing stand along with the governor and the mayor and
the rest. And you've got the goods on you--you're wearing them on your
chest. And I'm about to lead you to him."

Whereupon old Mr. John J. Coincidence, standing in the crowd, took out
his fountain pen and on his shirt cuff scored a fresh tally to his own
credit.

CHAPTER VII

WHEN AUGUST THE SECOND WAS APRIL THE FIRST

How Ethan A. Pratt, formerly of South New Medford, in the State of
Vermont, came to be resident manager and storekeeper for the British
Great Eastern Company, Ltd., on Good Friday Island, in the South Seas,
is not our present concern. Besides, the way of it makes too long a tale
for telling here. It is sufficient to say he was.

Never having visited that wide, long, deep and mainly liquid backside of
the planet known broadly as the South Seas but always intending to do
so, I must largely depend for my local colour upon what Ethan Pratt
wrote back home to South New Medford; on that, plus what returned
travellers to those parts have from time to time told me. So if in this
small chronicle those paragraphs which purport to be of a descriptive
nature appear incomplete to readers personally acquainted with the spots
dealt with or with spots like them the fault, in some degree at least,
must rest upon the fact that I have had my main dependence in the
preserved letters of one who was by no means a sprightly correspondent,
but on the contrary was by way of being somewhat prosy, not to say
commonplace, on his literary side.

From the evidence ext