curtain ropes, having switched on the flood of lights. "We're off," said Duval, rubbing his supple hands together as he always did just before they went on.

Then Molly found herself bowing to an explosive house. Already Duval was talking rapidly, rolling up his sleeves at the same time. Molly began her work of handing rings and balls to him, or arranging trays, and pushing used apparatus aside. Balls whirled into the air, dozens, hundreds of them. Steel rings clinked and melted into one another. Paper whizzed from cornucopias in endless streams and confusion. Shortly the adventurous small boy was extracted from his fellows, and eggs and coins slipped from his pockets. Then Duval, with his mocking patter, went among the audience, where cards changed their spots and were recovered from shuffled decks.

While Duval was busy in the house Molly straightened a table that had been pushed just enough to expose partially a service tray. That done nothing remained but to chat with Farris, who stood in the wings watching her

movements.

"That's a good act you've got. They like that stuff, just lap it up," he confided. His lips seemed fleshless muscle.

Molly's eyes brightened. "They sure do. And Duval's got a good line, don't you think?"

Farris pushed out his flabby lips meditatively.

"Yes," he said, "pretty fair; but not so good as the last fellow I had though. Hiram Hedges. Know him?" "Sure, he was on at Pocatello with us. Didn't care far it much myself. Why, we got a hand that made his sound sick."

With that she crossed to the other side, casting a look

at Duval, who was pacing the uncarpeted aisles, striking a laugh here and there, then a roar. When he turned back to the stage the hand that Molly touched to her hair shook slightly. That time in the act was near when she, and not Duval, focussed that slope of eyes. She took her place behind one of the tables covered with red velvet.

From the center of the stage Duval spoke in low clear tones to a quieted house. "An act which has mystified and confounded the greatest scientific minds of the time" Then he led her a bit grandiosely to the couch. When she had lain down he adjusted the folds of her dress so that in dropping they would cover all trace of the support, and retired behind the couch, still bowing and smiling. The girl at the piano was playing softly. Duval's face became sober as his hands waved regular paths over her. At first the crank squeaked a little and Duval frowned, but the lifting continued smoothly and she knew that the rod, hidden by Duval's sturdy leg, was creeping up and up until it should engage the bar. A push, a start, and she was lifted an inch. The house grew quieter. Up and up-she must not move. Duval was passing hoops over her, back and forth, back and forth. Then she was going down; gradually she settled on the couch and the support stopped cutting her back. The applause rose in a wave, and she, Duval holding her hand, was bowing to it.

Again Duval stepped to the front of the stage. “We now come, ladies and gentlemen, to the last exhibition of all. This is an act that I have performed for years, and not only in America-"

While Duval talked Molly was arranging the background of planks so that its scarred surface angled to

ward the audience. Next, Duval had taken her hand and was placing her against the background, elevating her arms, stepping off a yard to look at her posture critically, returning to move a stiffened arm half an inch, all the while with tiny glints dancing on the dark curves of his eyes.

He had drawn off and was holding up for the inspection of the audience one of the heavy gleaming knives. He faced her and the board, the knife slanted and flashed in his hand. She closed her eyes. Thud! Through a snaky veil of fire indefinitely before her shone pale blue lights. Only effort could open her eyes; and she saw knife following knife, given off from a dark blot against the wings, a black sun from which flashed silver lightnings. She must run, but she could not move. She lived in a rhythm of clearing and dwindling masses, alternating between a white chaos and the stage of the Strand. She caught Duval's face, drawn, intent, and blackening. He was to throw another. Thud! Another. . . . Alone in a white heaven, englobed in light, knives beating on her from every side, constantly, pitilessly. She must not move, not her head. She could not.

Then the great blaze in which she swung and paled and shook, and suddenly broke to objects. She was on the floor, gazing at the rolled drops and rigging, and somewhere between her and the ceiling floated Duval's enlarged face, blanched and smooth. He was trying to speak through a din of screaming, trying ineffectually, not attempting to make her hear, just talking. The face and ceiling dissolved, and far overhead was only a tumult of lights, then crashing wheels of darkness.

Duval, down on his knees, lifted slow eyes from the work of the knife to watch the curtain as it hitched toward the floor.

T

A RURAL COMMUNITY

BY RUTH SUCKOW

HE station agent at Walnut, and Mrs. Jake Dietz who was expecting her brother's wife from

Pomeroy, could not place the man who got off the "Clipper" at 10:10. He did not look just like a traveling man. He was stocky, moved very briskly, had a slight mustache, wore a gray suit and a traveling cap, and carried a bag pasted over with labels which Mrs. Dietz could not make out. She did not hear him ask the station agent where Luke Hockaday lived, or it would have come to her who he must be that Ralph Chapin whom Luke Hockaday had "raised" and who was now a writer of some kind. But she was busy greeting her brother's wife and saying "Well, you got here."

Ralph Chapin looked alertly about him, at the yellowand-brown depot with the row of willow trees and the pastures beyond, at the one small business street and the dingy brick Opera House and Masonic Hall. He thought, "That was here that wasn't." The sharp white steeple of the little old Congregational church where he had suffered every Sunday through one of Mr. Soper's half-hour prayers, no longer rose from the maple trees beyond the Opera House. It had burned, he remembered, and now there was a modern building of pressed brick with a square English tower. He noticed that the little street "across the tracks," where the old

hotel and livery barn stood, was falling into decay. One old man sat out in a windsor chair in front of the empty livery stable. Two or three automobiles passed. They were putting up two new "pebble dash" bungalows on what used to be a vacant lot filled with red clover. Changes-even here! You couldn't escape them.

The station agent had told him that Luke Hockaday's was just at the edge of town"Well, you know where the old Wood place is? Well, d'you know where Art Penhollow's pasture is where the dump is? Well, d'you know where the cemetery is? Well, right across from that where the road turns." He thought that he could find it. This was the first time that he had been in Walnut since Luke Hockaday had moved into town; it must be fifteen years or more.

He went along a street that had a sidewalk only part of the way. It was "across the tracks" in the old part of town. The first thing that he had noticed when the train pulled out was the stillness everywhere-only twitterings of birds and an occasional trill of song from a fence or tree. His mind, still filled with the rumblings and shriekings of cities, could hardly take it in. Was everyone asleep? As he looked down the street, it pleased him to fancy that the whole town had fallen asleep, like the Sleeping Beauty's castle, and was waiting for him to come back to waken it. Because this street had scarcely changed at all. It was almost the same!

He had been prepared for change. Flying about all over the civilized world as he did, change was the only thing he saw. His mind was full of a world rocking and falling and transforming itself into something undreamed of before-of new inventions, changing empires, a tottering social order, revolution. He had ex