e the words of his own lauds, so
long hidden in the secret of his breast, and now rejoicing above him
through the spheres. And his soul rose on the chant, and soared with it
to the seat of mercy.

THE LAST ASSET

I

"THE devil!" Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the dry
old gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the quiet
restaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile: "You don't seem
particularly annoyed at meeting him."

Garnett returned the smile. "I don't know why I apostrophized him, for
he's not in the least present--except inasmuch as he may prove to be at
the bottom of anything unexpected."

The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in the
thin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious truths,
twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out shrewdly:
"Ah, it's generally a woman who is at the bottom of the unexpected.
Not," he added, leaning forward with deliberation to select a
tooth-pick, "that that precludes the devil's being there too."

Garnett uttered the requisite laugh, and his neighbour, pushing back
his plate, called out with a perfectly unbending American intonation:
"Gassong! L'addition, silver play."

His repast, as usual, had been a simple one, and he left only thirty
centimes in the plate on which his account was presented; but the
waiter, to whom he was evidently a familiar presence, received the
tribute with Latin affability, and hovered helpfully about the table
while the old gentleman cut and lighted his cigar.

"Yes," the latter proceeded, revolving the cigar meditatively between
his thin lips, "they're generally both in the same hole, like the owl
and the prairie-dog in the natural history books of my youth. I believe
it was all a mistake about the owl and the prairie-dog, but it isn't
about the unexpected. The fact is, the unexpected _is_ the devil--the
sooner you find that out, the happier you'll be." He leaned back,
tilting his smooth bald head against the blotched mirror behind him,
and rambling on with gentle garrulity while Garnett attacked his omelet.

"Get your life down to routine--eliminate surprises. Arrange things so
that, when you get up in the morning, you'll know exactly what is going
to happen to you during the day--and the next day and the next. I don't
say it's funny--it ain't. But it's better than being hit on the head by
a brick-bat. That's why I always take my me