tranger. He recollected seeing her perhaps a dozen times.
She had been a shy child, not given to climbing over visitors' knees;
not the precocious offspring of the average theatrical mother. So in
the past he had somewhat overlooked her. Then one day recently he had
dropped in to see Burlingame and had seen Kitty instead; which accounts
for his presence here this day. Neither Kitty nor Burlingame suspected
the true attraction. The dramatic editor accepted the advent as a
peculiar compliment to himself. And it is to be doubted if Cutty himself
realized that there was a true magnetic pole in this cubbyhole of a
room.

Kitty, however, had vivid recollections. Actually the first strange man
she had ever met. But not having been visible on her horizon, except in
flashes, she knew of the man only what she had read and what Burlingame
had casually offered during discussions.

"Well, anyhow," said Burlingame, complacently, "the war is over."

Cutty smiled indulgently. "That's the trouble with us chaps who tramp
round the world for news. We can't bamboozle ourselves like you folks
who stay at home. The war was only the first phase. There's a mess over
there; wanting something and not knowing exactly what, those millions;
milling cattle, with neither shed nor pasture. The Lord only knows how
long it will take to clarify. Would you mind if I smoked?"

"Wow!" cried Burlingame.

"Not at all," answered Kitty. "I don't see how any pipe could be worse
than Mr. Burlingame's."

"I apologize," said the dramatic editor, humbly.

"You needn't," replied the girl. She turned to the war correspondent.
"Any new drums?"

"I remember that day. You were scared half to death at my walls."

"Small wonder! I was only twelve; and I dreamed of cannibals for weeks."

"Drums! I wonder if any living man has heard a greater variety than
I? What a lot of them! I have heard them calling a jehad in the Sudan.
Tumpi-tum-tump! tumpitum-tump! Makes a white man's hair stand up when he
hears it in the night. I don't know what it is, but the sound drives the
Oriental mad. And that reminds me--I've had them in mind all day--the
drums of jeopardy!"

"What an odd phrase! And what are the drums of jeopardy?" asked
Kitty, leaning on her arms. Odd, but suddenly she felt a longing to go
somewhere, thousands and thousands of miles away. She had never been
west of Chicago or east of Boston. Until this moment she had never
felt the call of the blood--her father'