wn room, stretched upon my pallet. I looked
around in a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme
by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the
bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head
buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those
crisp curls. I was an old man, she was a weak, wretched girl. She
raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of
stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for want of a
better simile, to the anguish in the eyes of a dying doe. Her lips
moved; she said something, I know not what. Then she went, and I was
left alone with Elysee. His words--broken, stumbling words--I remember:

"She asked to see you, Sebastian, my friend. I could not refuse. Her
papers were forged. She did come from Algiers, where her uncle is a
Capuchin. I do not ask, I do not wish to know, how much you know of
this. Before my Redeemer, I feel nothing but pity for the poor lamb.
Lie still, my friend; try to sleep. We are both older men than we were
yesterday."

There is little else to tell. Only twice have reflections of this
episode in my old life reached me in the seclusion of a missionary post
at the foot of the Andes. I learned a few weeks ago that the wretched
Abonus had bought a sailor's cafe on the Toulon wharves with his five
thousand francs. And I know also that the heart of the
Marshal-President was touched by the sad story of Renee, and that she
left the prison La Salpetriere to lay herself in penitence at the foot
of Mother Church. This is the story of my friendship.

A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
--------------------
BY HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

_Hjalmar Hjorth Boyescn (born at Frederiksvaern, Norway, September 23,
1848; died in 1895) was a university graduate who came to this country
in 1869 to take a professorship of languages in a small Ohio college.
Soon after he was called to Cornell, and in 1882 he became Professor of
German in Columbia. His proficiency in the English language was
phenomenal. His mastery of scholarly English in the essay form was to
be expected, but his ready command of the delicately shaded style
required of a literary novelist has not been equaled by any other
naturalized American author. Hence in this series he has received
citizenship among those to the manner born. The story selected by his
son, as representative of his work in brief fiction, is a fine study of
charac