e.

"Get right out on the Boris story," he said. "I depend on you. The
chief is interested in this too--telephoned to know whom I had on
it."

St. George knew perfectly that "the chief" was playing golf at Lenox
and no doubt had read no more than the head-lines of the Holland
story, for he was a close friend of the bishop's, and St. George
knew his ways; but Chillingworth's methods always told, and St.
George turned away with all the old glow of his first assignment.

St. George, calling up the Bitley Reformatory, knew that the Chances
and the Fates were all allied against his seeing the mulatto woman;
but he had learned that it is the one unexpected Fate and the one
apostate Chance who open great good luck of any sort. So, though the
journey to Westchester County was almost certain to result in
refusal, he meant to be confronted by that certainty before he
assumed it. To the warden on the wire St. George put his inquiry.

"What are your visitors' days up there, Mr. Jeffrey?"

"Thursdays," came the reply, and the warden's voice suggested
handcuffs by way of hospitality.

"This is St. George of the _Sentinel_. I want very much to see one
of your people--a mulatto woman. Can you fix it for me?"

"Certainly not," returned the warden promptly. "The _Sentinel_ knows
perfectly that newspaper men can not be admitted here."

"Ah, well now, of course," St. George conceded, "but if you have a
mysterious boarder who talks Patagonian or something, and we think
that perhaps we can talk with her, why then--"

"It doesn't matter whether you can talk every language in South
America," said the warden bruskly. "I'm very busy now, and--"

"See here, Mr. Jeffrey," said St. George, "is no one allowed there
but relatives of the guests?"

"Nobody,"--crisply.

"I beg your pardon, that is literal?"

"Relatives, with a permit," divulged the warden, who, if he had had
a sceptre would have used it at table, he was so fond of his little
power, "and the Readers' Guild."

"Ah--the Readers' Guild," said St. George. "What days, Mr. Jeffrey?"

"To-day and Saturdays, ten o'clock. I'm sorry, Mr. St. George, but
I'm a very busy man and now--"

"Good-by," St. George cried triumphantly.

In half an hour he was at the Grand Central station, boarding a
train for the Reformatory town. It was a little after ten o'clock
when he rang the bell at the house presided over by Chillingworth's
"rabble of wild eagles."

The Reformatory, a boastful