opened her eager lips and
became immortal. It was the first time in her life that she had drunk
out of a glass, and it would be the last.

Struck dumb by the trusting joy in those profound eyes, the Inca took
the empty glass from her trembling hand. Frail organism and prey of
love! Passion had surprised her too young. Noon had come before the
flower could open. She went out of the tent.

'Wench!' the Inca called after her, 'thy groat!'

She paid him and stood aimless for a second, and then started to cross
the roadway. Simultaneously there was a rush and a roar from the Cock
yard close by. The raging bull, dragging its ropes, and followed by a
crowd of alarmed pursuers, dashed out. The girl was plain in the
moonlight. Many others were abroad, but the bull seemed to see nothing
but her, and, lowering his huge head, he charged with shut eyes and
flung her over the Inca's booth.

'Thou's gotten thy wish: thou'rt young for ever!' the Inca of Peru, made
a poet for an instant by this disaster, murmured to himself as he bent
with the curious crowd over the corpse.

Black Jack was hanged.

Many years after all this Bursley built itself a new Town Hall (with a
spire, and a gold angel on the top in the act of crowning the bailiwick
with a gold crown), and began to think about getting up in the world.

* * * * *

MARY WITH THE HIGH HAND

In the front-bedroom of Edward Beechinor's small house in Trafalgar Road
the two primary social forces of action and reaction--those forces which
under a thousand names and disguises have alternately ruled the world
since the invention of politics--were pitted against each other in a
struggle rendered futile by the equality of the combatants. Edward
Beechinor had his money, his superior age, and the possible advantage of
being a dying man; Mark Beechinor had his youth and his devotion to an
ideal. Near the window, aloof and apart, stood the strange, silent girl
whose aroused individuality was to intervene with such effectiveness on
behalf of one of the antagonists. It was early dusk on an autumn day.

'Tell me what it is you want, Edward,' said Mark quietly. 'Let us come
to the point.'

'Ay,' said the sufferer, lifting his pale hand from the counterpane,
'I'll tell thee.'

He moistened his lips as if in preparation, and pushed back a tuft of
sparse gray hair, damp with sweat.

The physical and moral contrast between these two brothers was com