talk about South America, if you want to."

She nodded pleasantly, and the car moved away. The innocent, ingenuous
girl was soon to learn what modern news-gathering and dissemination
means in this great Republic. But she rode on, happy in the thought
that she and the Beaubien were formulating plans to save Mrs.
Hawley-Crowles.

"We'll arrange it somehow," said the Beaubien, looking up from her
papers when Carmen entered. "Go, dearie, and play the organ while I
finish this. Then I will return home with you to have a talk with Mrs.
Hawley-Crowles."

For hours the happy girl lingered at the beloved organ. The Beaubien
at her desk below stopped often to listen. And often she would hastily
brush away the tears, and plunge again into her papers. "I suppose I
should have told Mrs. Hawley-Crowles," she said. "But I couldn't give
her any hope. And even now it's very uncertain. Ames _will_ yield!
I'll force him to! He knows I can expose him! And yet," she reflected
sadly, "who would believe _me_?" The morning papers lay still unread
upon her table.

Late in the afternoon the Beaubien with Carmen entered her car and
directed the chauffeur to drive to the Hawley-Crowles home. As they
entered a main thoroughfare they heard the newsboys excitedly crying
extras.

"Horrible suicide! Double extra! Big mining scandal! Society woman
blows out brains! Double extra!"

Of a sudden a vague, unformed presentiment of impending evil came to
the girl. She half rose, and clutched the Beaubien's hand. Then there
flitted through her mind like a beam of light the words of the
psalmist: "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy
right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." She sank back against
the Beaubien's shoulder and closed her eyes.

The car rolled on. Presently the chauffeur turned and said something
through the speaking tube.

"What!" cried the Beaubien, springing from the seat. "Merciful heaven!
Stop and get a paper at once!" The chauffeur complied.

A loud cry escaped her as she took the sheet and glanced at the
startling headlines. Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, financially ruined,
and hurled to disgrace from the pinnacle of social leadership by the
awful exposure of the parentage of her ward, had been found in her
bedroom, dead, with a revolver clasped in her cold hand.

CARMEN ARIZA

BOOK 4

Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The morning cometh.