op by drop. After a while he came to
altogether. But he never thanked me; he wasn't that kind of a brute. I
got him into town the morning of the second day and turned him over to
his wife. So you see"--Hardy hesitated and looked at the circle of our
faces with an odd, appealing look--"it _is_ queer, isn't it? All mixed
up. One doesn't know." He sank back in his chair and began to scratch,
absent-mindedly, at a holder with a match.

The after-theatre crowd was beginning to come in; the sound of
laughter and talk grew steadily higher; far off an orchestra wailed
inarticulately.

"What became of them?" I asked.

Hardy looked up as if startled. "The Whitneys? Oh--she died--Martin
wrote me. Down there, within a year. One would know it would happen.
Like a flame, I suppose--suddenly."

"And the man--the fellow who was in love with her?"

Hardy stirred wearily. "I haven't heard," he said. "I suppose he is
still alive."

He leaned over to complete the striking of his match, and for an instant
his arm touched a glass; it trembled and hung in the balance, and he
shot out a sinewy hand to stop it, and as he did so the sleeve of his
dinner jacket caught. On the brown flesh of his forearm I saw a queer,
ragged white cross--the scar a snake bite leaves when it is cicatrized.
I meant to avoid his eyes, but somehow I caught them instead. They were
veiled and hurt.

THE WAKE[2]

BY DONN BYRNE

From _Harper's Magazine_

[2] Copyright, 1915, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1916, by Donn
Byrne.

At times the muffled conversation in the kitchen resembled the resonant
humming of bees, and again, when it became animated, it sounded like the
distant cackling of geese. Then there would come a pause; and it would
begin again with sibilant whispers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter
that somehow suggested the crackling of burning logs.

Occasionally a figure would open the bedroom door, pass the old man
as he sat huddled in his chair, never throwing a glance at him, and
go and kneel by the side of the bed where the body was. They usually
prayed for two or three minutes, then rose and walked on tiptoe to the
kitchen, where they joined the company. Sometimes they came in twos,
less often in threes, but they did precisely the same thing--prayed
for precisely the same time, and left the room on tiptoe with the same
creak of shoe and rustle of clothes that sounded so intensely loud
throughout the room. They might have