ains
are all laid out for them, artists want to do the red and green futurist
horrors that they love so. Now, what's that noise?"

A queer kind of noise it was. Polly sat up quite suddenly. It seemed to
come from behind a clump of bushes some distance to the right. It was a
pounding, scraping sort of noise, not very loud, but distinctly
disconcerting. You got the impression that whoever was doing it was trying
not to make any more noise than he could help. Polly's heart beat rapidly.
She must call one of the men. She rose unsteadily and at the same moment
the noise stopped. A tall figure stepped out from behind the bushes and
came toward the house.

Polly stepped back into the shadow of the porch. She was about to dive
into the open window when another sound caught her ear. The man was
whistling softly--whistling the Slumber Motif from Die Walkuere! Polly
laughed aloud. She had taken Henry Hard for a bandit.

"Hello, what are you doing up on deck?" he said, whimsically. "I thought
we'd sent the passengers below and battened down the hatches."

"I couldn't sleep, so I came out here. What are you doing with that pick?
Was it you I heard digging?"

"Scott and me. I came up for a match."

"But what can you be digging for at this time of night? Not buried
treasure?" eagerly.

"My dear child, I hate to disappoint you, knowing your feelings on the
subject. If you must know, we killed a couple of Yaquis and we're burying
them on what we'd call at home 'the lawn.' It's rather awful, but we can't
help it."

"Killed them!" Polly's eyes were wide with horror.

"It's a rotten business, if you ask me, both killing and burying. I'm just
beginning to form a faint idea of the sort of thing the youngsters we sent
abroad had to face. I was keeping up my courage by whistling. Won't you go
to bed like a nice girl?"

"No. I couldn't stand it in there in the dark. It doesn't seem so bad out
here. Go on--don't bother about me."

After Hard had got his match and joined Scott again behind the bushes,
Polly sat and listened to the ominous sounds, her pleasant reflections
quite at an end.

"That's how it always goes. You begin to feel comfortable and pleased with
your philosophy and yourself and then reality comes along and swats you
one in the eye. I will not think of those Indians! I'll think of Bob and
Emma. Wonder what kind of a nurse Emma makes? Not that she'll have a
chance to try, poor lamb. Those trained ones will shoo her o