ain. All that busy day between the demands
that business made on him, and once even in the midst of dictating to
his typewriter, his thoughts kept turning to that far-away island in the
Southern seas, where Tusitala's road gleams white under the tropic sun.
He had met Robert Louis Stevenson once, the tale-teller of Eugenia's
story, and he well understood the influence of that noble life over the
old chiefs who called him "brother."

The words that Eugenia had quoted in her letter rang in his ears all
day, every way he turned: "_Fame dies and honours perish, but
loving-kindness is immortal._" He seemed to hear them when a poor woman
came into his office, asking for a position for her son. They stopped
the curt refusal on his lips, and caused him to take half an hour of his
precious time to help her.

He heard them again when a case was reported to him of a man living in
one of his tenement-houses, who could not pay his rent because he was
too ill to work, and could not hope to recover in his present
surroundings. The stifling heat of the crowded tenement was killing him.
In his weakened condition he was slowly sinking under his burden of debt
and worry, and the thought that his helpless family was almost starving
and would be left uncared for when he died.

Mr. Forbes turned away with an impatient frown from his collector's
report, but that voice from far Samoa seemed to speak again. It was
Tusitala's, and again he saw the road dug to last for ever, in the white
light of the tropic skies. He sat with his head on his hand a moment,
and then, slowly reaching for his check-book filled out a blank, signed
it, and sealed it in an envelope.

Pushing it toward his astonished collector, he said: "Here, Miller, take
that down to Wiggins, and tell him I said to pick up himself and family,
and go down to the seashore for a couple of weeks. It will put them all
on their feet again to get out of that place into the salt air, and,
wait a minute, Miller,"--as the collector moved off,--"take him a
receipt for two months' rent."

Miller walked away, speechless with astonishment, but he had found his
tongue by the time he got back. He went into the private office, hat in
hand, and waited patiently until Mr. Forbes looked up.

"Well?"

"Wiggins says to tell you, sir, that he will write to you to-morrow, but
if you'll excuse me, sir, for meddling in what is none of my business,
I'd like you to know before then what a little heaven o