g
from his seat, began to drown the noise of countless feet on the stairs
by elevating his thin falsetto:

"P'r'aps, Mr. Cheerman, it's orl on the squar'. We know Mr. Henly can't
tell a lie; but I'm powerful dubersome that thar's a balyance dyue this
yer committee from the gent who hez the flo'--if he ain't done gone laid
it yout fo' sable ac--ac--fo' fyirst-class funerals."

I felt at that moment as if I should like to play the leading character
in a first-class funeral myself. I felt that every man in my position
ought to have a nice, comfortable coffin, with a silver door-plate, a
foot-warmer, and bay-windows for his ears. How do you suppose you would
have felt?

My leap from the window of that committee room, my speed in streaking it
for the adjacent forest, my self-denial in ever afterward resisting the
impulse to return to Berrywood and look after my political and material
interests there--these I have always considered things to be justly
proud of, and I hope I am proud of them.

"THE BUBBLE REPUTATION"

HOW ANOTHER MAN'S WAS SOUGHT AND PRICKED

It was a stormy night in the autumn of 1930. The hour was about eleven.
San Francisco lay in darkness, for the laborers at the gas works had
struck and destroyed the company's property because a newspaper to which
a cousin of the manager was a subscriber had censured the course of a
potato merchant related by marriage to a member of the Knights of
Leisure. Electric lights had not at that period been reinvented. The sky
was filled with great masses of black cloud which, driven rapidly across
the star-fields by winds unfelt on the earth and momentarily altering
their fantastic forms, seemed instinct with a life and activity of their
own and endowed with awful powers of evil, to the exercise of which they
might at any time set their malignant will.

An observer standing, at this time, at the corner of Paradise avenue and
Great White Throne walk in Sorrel Hill cemetery would have seen a human
figure moving among the graves toward the Superintendent's residence.
Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of thinner gloom, this
figure had a most uncanny and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak
shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head was a slouch hat, pulled
down across the forehead and almost concealing the face, which was
further hidden by a half-mask, only the beard being occasionally visible
as the head was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak.