t upon him. He
had been unanimously blackballed, even his proposer and seconder, who had
been browbeaten into nominating him for membership, voting against him.

"I may be a pirate," he cried, when he heard what the club had done, "but
I have feelings, and the Associated Shades will repent their action. The
time will come when they'll find that I have their club-house, and they
have--its debts."

It was for this purpose that the great terror of the seas had come upon
this, the first favorable opportunity. Kidd knew that the house-boat was
unguarded; his spies had told him that the members had every one gone to
the fight, and he resolved that the time had come to act. He did not
know that the Fates had helped to make his vengeance all the more
terrible and withering by putting the most attractive and fashionable
ladies of the Stygian country likewise in his power; but so it was, and
they, poor souls, while this fiend, relentless and cruel, was slowly
approaching, sang on and danced on in blissful unconsciousness of their
peril.

In less than five minutes from the time when his sinister-craft rounded
the bend Kidd and his crew had boarded the house-boat, cut her loose from
her moorings, and in ten minutes she had sailed away into the great
unknown, and with her went some of the most precious gems in the social
diadem of Hades.

The rest of my story is soon told. The whole country was aroused when
the crime was discovered, but up to the date of this narrative no word
has been received of the missing craft and her precious cargo. Raleigh
and Caesar have had the seas scoured in search of her, Hamlet has offered
his kingdom for her return, but unavailingly; and the men of Hades were
cast into a gloom from which there seems to be no relief.

Socrates alone was unaffected.

"They'll come back some day, my dear Raleigh," he said, as the knight
buried his face, weeping, in his hands. "So why repine? I'll never lose
my Xanthippe--permanently, that is. I know that, for I am a philosopher,
and I know there is no such thing as luck. And we can start another
club."

"Very likely," sighed Raleigh, wiping his eyes. "I don't mind the club
so much, but to think of those poor women--"

"Oh, they're all right," returned Socrates, with a laugh. "Caesar's wife
is along, and you can't dispute the fact that she's a good chaperon. Give
the ladies a chance. They've been after our club for years; now let 'em
have it, and le