been coming closer and closer this last half hour. He is here by the door. He is coming in now to go home with you."

For a long, chilling instant the silence held.

Then the door swung back. Joe Lake strode in and knelt beside the bed. "Yes," he said, and hid his face. George Freeman went out into the hall. It was a dingy little place papered in huge red scrolls on a green background; but to George Freeman that hall was spacious and entirely beautiful.

GLARE OF CIRCUMSTANCE

BY R.

L. SERGEL

A

Is the train altered its direction a square of sharp

edged sunlight cut Molly Peter's gray skirt and

climbed upward until it rested on the lower half of her face-one of regular features dulled by a porous skin, the face of a woman around thirty-five. The warmth stung her from drowsiness, and with the impetus of one who overcomes inertia she reached for the shade and drew it down. The train was creaking around a long curve to pull ahead over the vast circle of sagebrush, dusty green with its green blurring into indefinite blue. From the sky, blue and clear as a jewel, the sun poured its white blood, bitterly oppressive. In her aroused position Molly caught sight, through the window ahead, of low buildings, some white, some nondescript, all of them compressed under the wavering heaviness of light.

"Samson, Samson. Change cars for Harvey, Kimberly, and all points east." The brakeman banged the door open and disappeared into the smoker.

Molly stood up to brush her dress, and a yellow mist followed her hands. With her coat over one arm and her suitcase before her she sat down. Across the aisle a Swede was trying to control two boys of three and four while his red-faced wife nursed a fidgeting baby. All others in the car were sunk low in their seats, a few munching bananas and sandwiches.

A yellow building glided past, and a street of cottages

swung on its axis and passed from view; then a grain elevator. With a grind and creaking the train stopped by a station of the same muddy green color as those passed during the morning. Once off the train Molly stood still, looking toward the engine. The conductor and four other men stood by the truck on which black trunks lettered in white were being thrown. Molly stepped back to the train, putting one foot on the bottom step; after a few seconds she withdrew it, walked a few feet toward the truck and stopped again. A streak of dust on her waist brought her hand up in a brushing movement which resulted in a smudge. Biting her lower lip she brushed again, but the smudge was set more firmly. Thus engaged she did not seem to hear the conductor's "All aboard." With the sudden consciousness of the moving train she started toward it, putting her hand out limply against its dull green boards. Limply, as the end of the last coach passed, her hand touched the hot metal bars and dropped to her side.

She was left facing the sagebrush, which the horizon held with its round in a great semi-circle closed by a shining line of steel. Afresh she felt in her nostrils the dry pungency of the sage, and as the unchecked power of the sun came upon her in waves she moved to the thin rim of shade by the station. Inside, the telegraph instruments were clicking sharply: it might have been the crackling of the heat. Farther down the platform the familiar figure of a short heavy man about her own age walked lightly toward a dray, on which he tossed a small bag. Keeping to the narrow path of shade Molly moved toward him. As she came up the man turned to her with the smooth quickness of a cat. His short thick body made it a movement of animal grace and power.

"Better throw your suitcase on here too." Before he had finished speaking he had thrown it on top of the long black trunks, labelled in white, "The Miraculous Duvals." "Take 'em all to the Strand." Duval addressed a man in a straw hat who was climbing on the seat of the dray. "How far down the street did you say it was?"

"Block and a half."

Molly and Duval crossed the drab pad of dust that served for a road to the dust-powdered strip of hot cement walk. A broad street of gray frame store buildings and two or three brick blocks gave up to their view, at its farther end-some five or six blocks distant-another blurred segment of the green and purple sage through which their train had puffed and jerked for half a day. To the left and right, before the buildings merged, they could see the near limits of the town; beyond that rose again the slopes of the flat basin.

"S'a bit cooler off the train," said Duval, pushing his hat back on his broad forehead and wiping the sweat from his well-formed nose.

"Not enough to matter. This is Samson, ain't it? Say, if you hadn't told me when you come back from the smoker for that deck I'd never've got off here."

"Samson, Idaho. You've got it. Next stop is Kimberly. Bigger place than this, and a better house. We're the whole trick here."

"Usually are on Briscoe time. Never strike a house that'll carry more'n two acts on Saturday maybe. They do better in Pocatello. Do we strike there again?” "No, we're booked south."

An electric sign, "Strand," drew them toward it. In the shady recess of the entrance under it a medium sized man with dark pimply features leaned against the ticket

window and sucked at a bottle of pop through a straw. Duval put out his hand.

"Are you Farris ?"

"That's me. You're Duval? I've been looking for you. Last Briscoe time I booked didn't show up. Best house I'd had in four months. Come on in." Farris turned to the doors as if to lead them in. Molly stood gazing at a display of photographs of Duval and some woman she had never seen. "Nothing on till evening," Farris continued, "matinée no good now-not in July. They can't come in until evening. You might come in and look the little old house over. I've got some dandy new sets for just your sort of stuff. Course we don't run much here, chiefly on week-ends."

"We'll give it the once-over later," Duval answered. "Just now we're looking for some rooms and for the post office. Where'll we find them?"

Farris turned from the door. "Well, I'll tell you. There's the Samson Hotel, and White's, and then there's Mrs. Jacoby's, over the bank. Down there on the corner, see? Most of 'em stay there. She's clean and reasonable. The mail won't be out for fifty minutes. When'll you be back?"

"I'll be here soon enough. Don't worry." Duval had taken Molly's arm and was guiding her down the street to the bank.

Mrs. Jacoby answered Duval's knock with the pace of one who goes to meet an expected but not exciting guest. A moment later her fat arm banged open the door of a low-ceilinged room.

"You can have this for a dollar a night." Her weak fat blue eyes rolled to their corners as she looked slantwise at Molly, without the aid of her spectacles, about the