our soul expert now, so go over to the City Hall and ask
the mayor and any politicians you meet what's the color of their souls.
It ought to make a fair Sunday special." And Naylor swung around to his
desk, for the city editor had just told him that the headless trunk of a
woman had been picked up in the river--a find that promised a good
story--and a newspaper man cannot waste time on yesterday.

Simpkins' face fell. That he had not been assigned to find the head was,
he knew, the beginning of his punishment. But as he walked down the
dingy hall to the street his step became more buoyant, and once in the
open air he started off eager and smiling. For a good opening sentence
was already shaping in his head, and as he stepped into the City Hall he
was repeating to himself:

"Yesterday, when the Mayor was asked, 'What is the color of your soul?'
he returned his stereotyped 'Nothing to give out on that subject,' and
then added, 'But it would be violating no confidence to tell you that
Boss Coonahan's is black.'"

To Simpkins it had been given to lift the veil and to know the truth;
yet he was back again serving the false gods.

[Illustration]

* * * * *

WHERE LOVE CONQUERS.

The Reckoning.

By Robert W. Chambers.

The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York, the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son, the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.

The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third, in order, is not completed. The fourth is
the present volume.

As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Ir