advise Youth. Why should I expect you
to abide by my silly counsels? Who am I to interfere with the dominant
fates! Says the snail to the avalanche: 'Go slow!' and the avalanche--"

"Hey! Hi! You Mordaunt Estate!" broke in young Mr. Dyke, shouting. "I
beg your pardon, Dominie, I've got to see the Estate for a minute."

Rushing across the street, he intercepted that institutional gentleman
in the act of dipping a brush into a can in front of Number 37.

"Don't, for Heaven's sake, touch that front!" implored the improver of
it.

"Why not?" demanded the Estate.

"I want to rent it. As it is. From to-day."

The Mordaunt Estate turned a dull, Wagboomish look of denial upon him.
"Nope," said he. "I've had enough of short rentals. It don't pay. I'm
going to paint her up and lease her for good."

"I'll take your lease," insisted Martin Dyke.

"For how long a period?" inquired the other, in terms of the Estate
again.

The light that never was, on sea or land, the look that I had surprised
on the face of illusion-haunted Youth in the moon glow, gleamed in
Martin Dyke's eyes.

"Say a million years," he answered softly.

THE GUARDIAN OF GOD'S ACRE

As far as the eye could apprehend him, he was palpably an outlander. No
such pink of perfection ever sprung from the simple soil of Our Square.
A hard pink it was, suggestive less of the flower than of enameled
metal. He was freshly shaved, freshly pressed, freshly anointed, and, as
he paced gallantly across my vision, I perceived him to be slightly
grizzled at the temples, but nevertheless of a vigorous and grim
youthfulness that was almost daunting. Not until he returned and stood
before me with his feet planted a little apart, giving an impression of
purposeful immovability to his wiry figure, did I note that his eyes
belied the general jauntiness of his personality. They were cold, direct
eyes, with a filmy appearance, rather like those of a morose and
self-centered turtle which had lived in our fountain until the day the
Rosser twins fell in, when it crawled out and emigrated.

"Nice day," said the stranger, shifting a patent-leathered foot out of a
puddle.

"Very," I agreed. Finical over-accuracy about the weather is likely to
discourage a budding acquaintanceship.

"Have one?" He extended a gemmed cigarette-case, and when, removing my
pipe, I had declined in suitable terms, lighted up, himself. He then sat
down upon the dryest portion of the bench not occupi