just the same."

Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from
the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the
frowsy face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more
comfortable position. "Poor devil!" he said, as he drew the tattered
clothes closer about the Prince's breast.

Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The
young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house
of his relinquished hopes--and cried aloud profane words of
holy rapture.

From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy,
fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy.

By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing of the
delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks.

"Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the
citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and
announced:

"Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir."

And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made
further oration.

"By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've
known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a--"

But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer,
a fast receding black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with
three lighted upper windows.

And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats
they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure that
sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it.

"It's Dopy Mike," said one. "He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for
twenty years. On his last legs, I guess."

The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and crisp
in the hand of the sleeper.

"Gee!" he remarked. "He's doped out a fifty-dollar bill, anyway. Wish
I knew the brand of hop that he smokes."

And then "Rap, rap, rap!" went the club of realism against the shoe
soles of Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna.

SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry top-riders had
been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk
was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers,
justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon
by some other creature.

The mega