Out of this, you! You!"

Rawling's foot caught in the doorway of the bright hall, and he
stumbled, the light dazzling on the cockney's wet bulk hurling itself
toward the great woman where she stood, her arms flung cruciform,
guarding the empty room. The bodies met with a fearful jar as Rawling
staggered up, and there came a crisp explosion before he could raise his
hand. Bill's naked shoulder cannoned into him, charging, and Bill's
revolver clinked against his own. Rawling reeled to the stair-head,
aiming as Bill caught at the man's shirt; but the cockney fell backward,
crumpling down, his face purple, his teeth displayed.

"In the head!" said Bill, and bent to look, pushing the plastered curls
from a temple. The beast whimpered and died; the knife rattled on the
planks.

"Dad," cried Sanford, "what on--"

"Stay where you are!" Rawling gasped, sick of this ugliness, dizzy with
the stench of powder and brandy. Death had never seemed so vile. He
looked away to the guardian where she knelt at her post, her hands
clasped on the breast of her coarse white robe as if she prayed, the
hair hiding her face.

"I'll get a blanket," Bill said, rising. "There come the men! That you,
Ian?"

The smith and a crowd of pale faces crashed up the stairs.

"God forgie us! We let him by--the garden, sir. Alec thought he--"

"Gosh, Onnie!" said Bill, "excuse _me_! I'll get some clothes on. Here,
Ian--"

"Onnie," said Sanford, in the doorway--"Onnie, what's the matter?"

As if to show him this, her hands, unclasping, fell from the dead bosom,
and a streak of heart's blood widened from the knife-wound like the
ribbon of some very noble order.

A CUP OF TEA[4]

[Note 4: Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright,
1918, by Maxwell Struthers Burt.]

BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT

From _Scribner's Magazine_.

Young Burnaby was late. He was always late. One associated him with
lateness and certain eager, impossible excuses--he was always coming
from somewhere to somewheres, and his "train was delayed," or his huge
space-devouring motor "had broken down." You imagined him, enveloped in
dust and dusk, his face disguised beyond human semblance, tearing up and
down the highways of the world; or else in the corridor of a train,
biting his nails with poorly concealed impatience. As a matter of fact,
when you saw him, he was beyond average correctly attired, and his
manner was suppressed, as if to conceal the keenness t